Coco Claims She ‘Paved the Way for Thick Girls’ in Revealing New Photo

Coco Austin is giving herself some serious props. The 38-year-old mom and reality star shared a throwback photo on Monday from her modeling days, writing in the caption that she “helped pave the way for thick girls.”

In the photo, which she says is from a motorcycle calendar, a younger Austin squats in front of a green motorcycle in a green thong bikini while looking over her shoulder at the camera.

Austin started the lengthy post by sharing that she spent 20 years as a model, even though many of her followers may not know that.

“I would like to shed light to almost 21 years of modeling,” she began. “New followers don’t even know I had a career in modeling they just see a wife,mother and someone that was on reality tv but just like every actor, singer, rapper, entertainer I’m proud of what I’ve done.”

“I feel people should know it wasn’t easy..I helped pave the way for thick girls during the skinny genre (during the Kate Moss days what they call the waif era) to be noticed as beautiful,” she said.

Austin continued, writing she was a “thick” model before the days of Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj and other famous curvy women today. She mentioned Jennifer Lopez, Anna Nicole Smith and other women, thanking them “for also seeing this vision.”

“To have booty it was considered to be fat in the modeling world. But I helped changed the minds of what booty was…I helped history in someway. I don’t want to toss it aside like it was nothing. I’d like to think some of my modeling was meaningful,” Austin wrote.

“After tons of calendars,DVD’s over 100 magazine covers and editorials I’m still standing.Thank you for all years of support .Power to the booty and strong healthy women!” she wrote.

While some followers wrote supportive comments like “You go girl,” many commenters found fault in Austin’s words, writing that she didn’t give enough credit to women of color — or plastic surgery.

“Sis, you paved the way for white women to get plastic surgery,” one dissenter commented. “But as for the minorities Melyssa Ford, J.Lo, etc. they paved the way for REAL thick women. Let’s get that straight. Stop trying to take the shine away from MLK Day #next.”

Another critic wrote, “You could’ve just posted your thirst trap…no need for a fake history book as a caption.”

“But its all fake…” one person wrote.

Later, Austin went back into the post and added an addendum about race, saying that, “20 years ago there were not a lot of white girls w/ thick bodies in the modeling game.”

“I was one of the 1st white models to break the mold & go mainstream with my body type and to let people know its OK to be curvy in the modeling world.Today curvy is the norm but when I first started out it wasn’t,” she wrote.