Myla Dalbesio is a 27-year-old model getting her big break with Calvin Klein’s “Perfectly Fit” campaign. The attention is even more exciting because she’s considered to be Calvin Klein’s first plus size model. However, Dalbesio is a size 10, while plus sizes are generally considered to start at size 12 or 14 — a fact which has earned the company some Internet outrage.
In an interview with ELLE, Dalbesio explained, “I’m not the biggest girl on the market but I’m definitely bigger than all the girls [Calvin Klein] has ever worked with, so that is really intimidating.” But her fears were for nothing: “No one even batted an eye. It was very cool.” Dalbesio and Calvin Klein are now dealing with the opposite problem: she’s viewed as too skinny to be to be embraced as a plus size model, prompting angry tweets like “People who consider [Dalbesio] a plus size need to see a shrink.”
A woman of Dalbesio’s size is considered an “in-betweenie” according to Nymag.com’s The Cut: not a sample size, nor can she squarely fit into the plus size category. For her part, Dalbesio seems well aware of her weight as a factor in her career. She told ELLE, “I don’t know about that runway though, that’s going to be a hard one to tackle.” Of course, she’s a model, so that must come with the territory. But it feels a little inappropriate that the whole world now knows she’s a size 10. (Or, according to some outlets, a size 8.)
Dalbesio nonetheless has praise for the inclusive direction Klein took the Perfectly Fit campaign, “They released me in this campaign with everyone else; there’s no distinction. It’s not a separate section for plus size girls.” With the recent scandal over Victoria’s Secret’s failed “Perfect Body” campaign, which brought backlash so strong the slogan was changed to “A Body for Every Body,” it’s not too much to ask that Calvin Klein include a range of women.
