This is Crystal Renn! For those of you who've never met her, she'a plus sized model who for years starved herself skinny to become the size 0 in her quest to become the next great supermodel. She became anorexic to the point where she was existing on sticks of gum everyday supplemented by lettuce and diet coke.

Fortunately for her and all of us, Crystal's body had other plans.

She realized one day during a particularly traumatic casting call that she could no longer maintain the horrible cycle she was in without dying. So she gave in an ate and allowed herself to break the cycle of denial that she'd been in for so long. She's now the highest paid plus sized model in the world and she'd only 23! She loves being a model, the whole playing with makeup thing and the gorgeous clothes that come with the deal. The difference is that now she's doing it her way and I think that she looks fabulous! The before skinny pictures of her are scary and should be a wakeup call for any of us fighting to make sense of our bodies. The photo shown her is the cover of her book. I bought it and have devoured it. Having been a fairly voluptuous woman for my entire adult life and having fought against my own body for decades, her story is incredibly validating for me.

I'd never been aware of her at all until my husband pointed out an article that he'd been shown at work. It seems that V Magazine (the totally glam fashion magazine that I think personally bests W on a regular basis) is putting out a "Size" issue to show that plus size women are utterly gorgeous and to address the problems of eating disorders that are affecting so many today , both young and old. Heres the link: http://www.vmagazine.com/

The first thing you'll be greeted by is a pop-up window featuring another plus sized model named Tara Lynn......You'll immediately notice that she's completely naked and totally gorgeous and when my husband showed her to me I was blown away. Here's a very fulled figured woman, not much smaller than me , but with all of her voluptuous curves on display for the world to see. His response to her beauty told me more about how he'd seem me in all of our years of marriage then words ever could. I'd always been ashamed of my very curvy body and here was the guy that I loved telling me that he found it really sensual and beautiful and that he wanted me to feel as confident as she did.

It's started me on a quest that I will be sharing with all of you here. Perfumerotica was supposed to be about to be sex , food, fashion, passion and perfume and it still is, but I've decided to add a topic. I'm a very confident woman, but I've spent my life worrying about every bite that I've taken and the constant stress of trying to diet and not diet definitely hampers this particular foodie.

I'm now spending my time enjoying my food in a way that I haven't. I'm giving myself permission to eat as if I were starving, because even though I'm not even remotely thin, emotionally the effect has been the same on me as if I've been denying myself forever. As a result I'm eating less. It's very strange but not unexpected. I already eat very well but I'm going to tone up what I have and no longer worry about every squeezing this size14 body into a 10.

I'm going to let my body decide once and for all what it wants to look like and then I'm going to give it the gift of full exposure. No more hiding my arms, no more looking for clothes to disguise my fuller curves. I'm aware that my struggle with body acceptance is not unique at all which is why I'm going to bring it here into the forefront instead of the acceptable (to me) head only profile pics that I've got posted all over the blogosphere. You'll still see wonderful fragrance reviews here on Perfumerotica and stories and recipes. What you'll see even more of though are my appetites and I'm warning you now, like my curvy body they are huge! Whether you're large or small, thin or zaftig we all deserve a chance to create the voice that is as expressive, big and bold as we are. This is my no holds barred attempt to create a place for us all to enjoy ourselves and get better acquainted with all of our appetites! If it provokes you good...if it inspires you even better. We are all hungry for authenticity and what better place to start than with our bodies. Passion doesn't have a size and neither does beauty. You'll definitely see more delicious recipes and you'll probably see a vibrator or two. What you might see from time to time are articles about the safest cosmetics to use and probably because I'm about 90% veggie at this point an article or two about our relationship to animal testing and the makeup products that we use. That being said there's room for us all here and that's the way that I like it. I hope that you enjoy reading this as much as I'm going to enjoy creating it for us all.