Letter: Size is no barrier to greatness

IN SUGGESTING that Dawn French - by promoting big clothes and the big unclothed - has become 'a role model for Miss Average' ('Whole lotta woman', 20 March), David Lister has, I think, missed the point of Ms French's enterprises.

Dawn French is not, as Roseanne Barr did before her current, somewhat enhanced Roseanne Arnold incarnation, insisting on a place for the unbeautiful and unglamorous female in a wrongly balanced medium. She is showing that big women (neither in spite of, nor merely because of, their size) are also sexy and desirable. There is nothing average about Dawn French. In intelligence, talent, humour, ambition, wealth and success, she is extremely uncommon, and also in her good looks. She is a naturally beautiful, stylish and well- dressed woman; if David Lister feels that her 'sizeable girth' somehow dilutes her classic features down to 'average', he is perhaps the wrong person to analyse the motives and effects of Ms French's modelling projects.

Victoria Coren

Oxford