Jordin Sparks is Happy With Her Body
May 30, 2007 by Jeanne
Jordin Sparks says she has struggled with accepting her body type for a long time. Hearing that makes me even more upset at pundits who have taken cheap shots at this young girl. American Idol’s youngest winner sat down with People magazine to discuss the issue. By the way, she mentions becoming a plus-sized model which solved a mystery for me – my daughter has a copy of Seventeen magazine from months ago and there’s an ad with a girl that looks exactly like Jordin. I guess it is her!
Anyway, here’s the interview!
In junior high school, Jordin was already 5′10″ and a size 12 and she dealt with it by slouching and wearing oversized clothes. “I stood out everywhere,” says Jordin. “I’d look at my friends who were just naturally tiny, and maybe they weren’t even a size 2, but they were smaller than me and that was good enough. I was like, ‘Oh, why can’t I look like that?’ “
Her attempts to lose weight through dieting have always failed. Jordin said “I like food too much to do it. I would try, like, ‘Hey I’m going to diet and I’ll be a size 8 by the end of the summer,’ but it never worked out.”
One day at their local mall, Jordin and her mom came across the newly launched plus-size store Torrid. “It was like angels – ‘ahhhhhhhh!’ – shining down on it because it’s sizes 12 and up. They have clothes for girls who aren’t an average size so they can totally feel cute and flirty and still keep up with the latest trends,” Jordin says, noting that being the store’s smallest size was “great for my self-esteem.”
In fact, just before auditioning for Idol, Jordin landed a modeling gig for Torrid. “I think it really helped boost her self-esteem and made her realize she’s beautiful as she is,” says her grandmother.
Her parents’ attitudes also helped Jordin feel good about herself. “My mom and my dad always were saying, ‘You’re beautiful, Jordin,’” says the Idol winner, whose father Phillippi, 38, a former star cornerback for the New York Giants, is 5′11″ (mom is 5′6″).
After nailing her Idol audition, Jordin’s confidence began to soar. For the first time in her life, she embraced her right to bare arms. Before the show, “I liked to wear sleeves because they would cover up my arms,” she says. When the show’s stylists made suggestions, “I’d go, ‘This dress is way too beautiful. If I add sleeves it will ruin it.’ So I just got over it.”
These days, “I’m really comfortable in my own skin,” Jordin says with her signature wide smile. “I learned that I’m not ever going to be a size 2. I would look so weird as a size 2. Somebody would blow and I would fall right over. It just wouldn’t be healthy.”
I am so glad she has come to terms with her weight and realizes that she is beautiful the way she is…good for her because it is really hard now-a-days to come to terms with the fact that you will never be a size 2. So many girls are falling into societies trap of being thin. They almost make it seem as though you are a bad person if your bones aren’t showing. I think it is pathetic and takes away from out individualism.
I too, like Jordin, have never been a size 2 and never will be. The smallest I’ve been is a size 4 right before I had children but as an athelete, and a boxer at that, there is no way I could be a size 4 or lower ever again but society would classify me as “plus” size and it’s sick…since when is a size 8 plus size???? Geesh!
I think she is defiantely a beautiful girl. I hear what you’re saying, A’kyra. It’s disgusting when you see someon like Nicole Richie who feels like they have to be extremely thin to fit in. What is wrong with the media? It’s just plain wrong. I do think that it is important to be healthy, though. If Jordin were, like, 100 pounds over weight, I would say she needs to pick a better food selection, but come on. It’s not as if she can’t fit through a door or something. Her dad WAS a football player.