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*Model Winnie Harlow (“America’s Next Top Model”) graces the cover of the May issue of Elle UK, outfitted in green and pink Gucci and donning turquoise eyeshadow. The headline reads: “The Face of Now: Why Difference is Everything.”
“There is a big shift happening in the fashion industry in terms of beauty standards, and I feel I’m part of that shift,” Harlow tells Elle. “I remember on America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks asked me if a photographer told me to cover my skin for a shoot, would I do it? I said no. I don’t care who it is, or who thinks I should. I’m going to stay true to myself.”
The 23-year-old Toronto-born beauty is one of a number of models and actors who have the skin condition Vitiligo, marked by whitish patches on darker skin.
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Elle writes that what mattered most to its editors is that “she’s boldly changing the conversation around beauty and helping to broaden the industry’s once narrow standards” — see her TED talk (with more than a million views) on her skin condition vitiligo for proof.
Harlow also doesn’t tolerate ignorance about her condition.
“I’m not a vitiligo sufferer,” she told the Daily Mail. “I’m not a vitiligo model. I am Winnie. I am a model. And I happen to have vitiligo. Stop putting these titles on me or anyone else.”
In a recent Instagram post, Harlow shared a picture of the newspaper, which described her as a “Canadian vitiligo sufferer” and accompanied it with a caption explaining that she is so much more than her condition.
“I’m not a ‘Vitiligo Sufferer,'” she wrote. “I’m not a ‘Vitiligo model.’ I am Winnie. I am a model. And I happen to have Vitiligo. Stop putting these titles on me or anyone else. I AM NOT SUFFERING! If anything I’m SUCCEEDING at showing people that their differences don’t make them WHO they are! All our differences are apart of who we are but they don’t define us!
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