Lauren Chan made history this past April when she became the first out lesbian to cover Sports Illustrated’s famed swimsuit issue.
Chan has been a plus-size model for over a decade, and in that time has been a vocal advocate of body diversity and size inclusivity in the fashion world.
On the cover she’s sexy in a green bikini, of course, but in accordance with her longstanding dedication to celebrating bodies of all kinds, Chan also took the time to show some of the angles that didn’t end up on the cover.
“This is what I looked like the day I shot my @si_swimsuit cover—these angles just don’t make it to the pages of the magazine,” she wrote, sharing pictures and video of what her body looked like behind the scenes, unretouched, below. She felt it was important to share. “You need to see them and I’d like for you to read this: I’m in my thirties, my tits have fallen, no workout ever toned my mid-section, my skin is loosening, any ass I had is looong gone…and I feel better than ever.”
Chan shares that her journey to body acceptance was a long one, as it is for many people, and many women in particular. “That’s not because I’ve gotten any smaller, it’s thanks to the shift in my mental health that has come from living as my authentic self,” she continued. She attributes this in part to coming out and coming into her queerness, which she did publicly with a Vogue essay in time her first Sports Illustrated Swim appearance in 2023. That authenticity, she says, also has a lot to do with understanding that sexiness isn’t a pose, but rather, as she writes below, “about being present; it’s about being at peace with who you are. And it’s about letting people f^#! off if they don’t like it.”
Chan had been in the fashion world not just as a model, but as a writer and editor–she previously worked at Glamour. It was there that she began covering size inclusivity. “It was a topic that data proved would work, yet, at the time, there wasn’t anyone currently at the magazine to be the face of that,” she told Elle in 2023. Chan became the face, and soon was all over television and the fashion world. She later left to start a size inclusive clothing brand, Henning, that was later purchased by the brand Universal Standard, and to continue modeling. The first time she appeared in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue, she was the first queer, plus-size Rookie model in the magazine, Elle shared. Charting a path is just what she does.
Now, with the success of the Sports Illustrated cover, Chan continues to bring her message with her. “Bigger bodies are artful, too,” she said on a recent Sports Illustrated body image panel. “What I really tried to do is stop posing in a way that was minimizing my insecurities. Rolls can be the art. It can be the reference you’re trying to achieve. And then when it’s printed somewhere like this, hopefully that becomes the reference for other people.”
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
