The day that Cindy Crawford has to come out and defend her body is the day the rest of us should go crawl under rocks. But in the wake of the Jennifer Love Hewitt “scandal” (the scandal being that she’s not a size 0, has a normal body, and had the nerve to be photographed as such) the paparazzi has been on the prowl for more unflattering photos of anyone they could get. And who better than a model? Cindy Crawford was photographed at the beach wearing a bikini. Her stomach is less-than-washboard. And by that I mean there is the world’s teeniest, tiniest bit of loose skin. You know, the kind that happens to most of the rest of us in spades after we pop out a few kids. Every other inch of Cindy appeared to be absolute perfection – but of course everyone honed in on the one “normal” area on her body and made a huge stink about how she’d let herself go. I was about eighteen shades of confused.

“I’m actually happier with my body now that I was back then because the body I have is the body I’ve worked for. When I was 23 other women could look at me and say, ‘Well, she’s never had kids.’ “But now I have and I know what it’s like to have to lose baby weight. It is a huge change for your body. You don’t even want to look in the mirror after you’ve had a baby because your stomach is hanging there like a Shar-Pei.” And the 41-year-old insists that even she is affected by the media’s pressure on women to be beautiful. She adds, “Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford. I have fat days, ugly days, blimp days, days that I just feel terrible about myself. I don’t want to have to be beautiful all the time. “I want to be able to look cruddy in my weekend sweats, with a pimple on my face and pimple cream on top of the pimple. The expectation to be beautiful always bothers me.”

[From Contact Music]

Cindy Crawford is the only supermodel I’ve ever really loved. She is crazy smart with a great head on her shoulders – in both senses of the world. Seriously, when she has to defend her body, something is just wrong with the world. I’m not going to post the stomach photos here, you can find them on the Daily Mail’s website. They captioned one of the photos “Motherhood has taken its toll on the supermodel.” 98% of us would be lucky to look like Cindy Crawford on her worst day. Let’s spend a little more time praising and a little less time criticizing.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Cindy Crawford and husband Rande Gerber at the Ocean’s 13 Los Angeles Premiere on June 5th. Images thanks to PR Photos. Header of the couple in Hawaii for Thanksgiving. Images thanks to Splash Photos.