Mad Mens Christina Hendricks a body image role model, UK minister says

07/27/2010 by Kristina Lopez

Christina Hendricks has been the center of attention for body conscious women recently. It is mostly because the voluptuous Mad Men star bucks the Hollywood trend of rail thin leading actresses and people are starting to take notice.

United Kingdom official Lynne Featherstone singled out Hendricks as a role model for women. "We need more of these role models," she said referring to Hendricks according to the BBC. There is such a sensation when there is a curvy role model. It shouldn't be so unusual."

Featherstone serves as the Equalities Minister in the UK and has campaigned against the fashion industry for their use of size-zero models and the overuse of airbrushing in magazines. "All women have felt that pressure of having to conform to an unrealistic stereotype, which plagues them their whole life," she said.

On the show Hendricks place Joan Harris (nee Holloway), office manager of the new agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

Despite all the praise Hendricks gets for her real figure, the actress has made it clear in the past that she wished the media would stop recognizing her for her curves and more for her acting skill. She told New York Magazine in February, "Anytime someone talks about your figure constantly, you get nervous, you get really self-conscious. I was working my butt off on the show, and then all anyone was talking about was my body!"

She also revealed that she has had to fight to keep her figure against the demands of her own management in Hollywood. "All those times I had agents who were like, 'You have to lose some weight,' and all of a sudden, people are celebrating it," Hendricks told Health Magazine in July. "I guess my mom raised me right. She was very celebratory of her body. I never heard her once say, 'I feel fat.'"