Mamamia Team Tuesday 7 August 2012 8:40am

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Last week, 23-year-old Australian model Robyn Lawley was named as the new face of a British lingerie brand. At the time of the announcement, there was cause for celebration.

The brand (Boux Avenue) replaced their size 10 ambassador with size 16 Lawley. Hurrah! Three cheers for diversity! Wasn’t it great to see a fashion label mixing it up a little and trying to promote healthy body image?

Apparently not.

Only days later the conversation has turned. It’s now become a debate over whether Lawley is really the size she says she is. Which is a shame, really. Sometimes it feels like a fashion brand takes one tiny step forward and then because they haven’t quite got to the diversity finish line yet – we tear them down.

News.com.au reports:

Daily Mail readers were outraged, some of them criticising the label for airbrushing the images and others saying Lawley must be smaller than she claims.

“It’s all very good picking a size 16 model, but then airbrushing her until she looks about a 12 kind of defeats the point,” one reader wrote.

Robyn Lawley models for Cosmopolitan Australia

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Lawley hit back when contacted, saying she certainly is a plus-size model.

“I embraced my size years ago and just because I’m tall doesn’t change the fact that I am a size 16,” she tells us via email. “And like everyone in my size range still struggle to buy high street and designer wear in my size as they usually stop at 12-14.

“Airbrushing is in everything these days – it is the client’s decision about those things, sometimes it’s also just the lighting and angles on the day.”

Mamamia has previously reported that:

Twenty-three-year-old model Robyn Lawley doesn’t think of herself as “plus-sized”. She prefers to use the term “normal sized”. And given the average Australian woman is a size 14-16, that’s exactly what Lawley is. Normal.

The Aussie model is making headlines this week because she’s just been signed as the face of a UK lingerie line – Boux Avenue is replacing their size 10 ambassador with size 16 Lawley.

This from The Huffington Post:

In a move to appeal to a curvier demographic, Boux Avenue replaced their former size 10 model Ola Jordan with the size 16 Lawley. And we couldn’t be happier with their choice.

The 23-year-old cover girl first made waves when she graced the over of Vogue Italia last year, but she’s continued to be a source of inspiration for aspiring models (and women in general) by encouraging them to have healthy body images — no easy feat in the modeling world.

She also runs her own food blog called Robyn Lawley Eats (hurrah!) where she uploads pictures and recipes her favourite meals – which is focused less on celery sticks and more on cupcakes.

What do you think of the criticism that Lawley is not the size she says she is?