Imagine a young, beautiful, innocent girl. She hardly ever eats and her stomach is constantly aching and growling with hunger. She knows that there is no way to feed this hunger without losing the world around her. When she does eat, it most likely is not much. She may have a piece of fruit or some carrots. She constantly has people barking at her and degrading her, shoved from person to person as just a body, nothing more. No, this is not an image from a third world country, or any holocaust; it is the life of today’s high fashion model.
For many years now many people have casually associated models with eating disorders, primarily anorexia nervosa. It is not a fact of the modeling world, but more of an unspoken secret. Unfortunately for fashion, the secret is now out, and healthy changes in the modeling and fashion world are long overdue. Weight minimums and health tests are just a couple of the ways senseless deaths and encouraged eating disorders can be avoided. Of course, there are flaws in these plans, and now, over a year after the eating disorder-related deaths of several models, not much has changed. It is clear that something is wrong with today’s models and beauty standards, and something must be done to change the scary skinny face of fashion.
Since the appearance of the super-thin, British model, appropriately named “Twiggy”, the world of fashion and the general public have had a fascination with being skinny. Over time models have become thinner and thinner, and though some have questioned the strategies behind the models’ ability to keep so svelte, not until the past year or so has the ugliness of the modeling industry been brought into the open and challenged. Still, contrary to the days when voluptuous women such as Marilyn Monroe and Bettie Page were the sex symbols of the world, thin is in and it has a way of sticking. According to an article from USA Today, most runway models are 14-19, with an average age of 16 or 17. Many are 5-foot-10 or 5-foot-11 and weigh 120 to 124 pounds and wear a size 2 or 4. Kelly Cutrone, owner of People’s Revolution says “If we get a girl bigger than a size 4, she is not going to fit the clothes. Clothes look better on thin people. The fabric hangs better.” According to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, women around the height of 5’10 should be anywhere from 133-144 pounds, in order to be considered to have a “small frame”. That is at the very least 9 pounds more than these runway models are said to weigh.
The fashion industry seems to benefit from these types of girls because they are young, want a career, and are willing to stay quiet and do as they are told. Another benefit is that unlike the muscular, super-celebrity Cindy Crawfords of the early 90s, today’s runway models are “far from being treated like superstars, you are more likely to see today’s so-called ‘supermodels’ being trodden on and barely earning a second glance as the fashion editors and buyers hurry to the next show”(Liz Jones). What this means is that fashion designers get to pay girls less and treat them worse to do the same thing people used to be idolized and respected for. There is little respect for the models who remain nameless, skeleton-like clones, literally being used as human hangers, for that is truly what most of these girls are seen as. Surely the clothes do “hang better” off of these super-thin girls, so it seems that the fashion designers get a fairly good deal off of girls with barely any body mass. In the place of curvaceous, high profile celebrity-type models taking over the runway and drawing more attention to themselves than to the clothes are tall, thin, pale looking girls who all look alike. These new models draw no attention to themselves. The clothes get all the attention, and literally hang off of them as they would a hanger or mannequin.
The emaciation of today’s supermodel has been pointed out by some people, but it still remains something that is talked about by few. It would seem to much of the general public, the terms “eating disorder” and “modeling” often go hand in hand. But to try searching those two words together in a bookstore or library catalogue is futile; the two terms never meet; there is no information on the two subjects combined. When interviewing Ikon model Justine (name has been changed), who has had problems with eating since about 6th grade, it was made clear that this is a topic that is greatly avoided in the fashion world. When asked if she has met other models with eating issues she replied “it’s not really a conversation I’ve heard actually, there’s also coke and adderall, a lot of girls utilize those substances I’m sure”. When asked if the agencies knew about the drug use, she replied “That’s not really a conversation a model has with her agent or booker. I’m sure they assume but if the girls are booking jobs and they have no proof, they don’t really care. If they cared they could drug test. That would never happen”. Basically the modeling and fashion industry ignore or deny the existence of eating disorders; as long as they get what they need from the girls, the problem does not exist. Justine has been to Renfrew, a rehabilitation and education center for eating disorders, twice and has been made to see nutritionists as well. She also has the beginning stages of osteoporosis, known as osteopenia, as a result of being underweight. “Basically, my parents pay my rent and tuition and then there’s the fact that I do have osteopenia, the beginning stages of osteoporosis, kind of unavoidable when you want to have a BMI of 15 point something for a few years”. Despite all that, she says that today, she feels pretty healthy, however she is still 5-foot-8 and weighs only 105 pounds. She says her “boyfriend and occasionally her parents” worry about her weight if she gets to be “under 100”. She says it is not really something she worries about. “Worry about losing my boyfriend, that’s about all.” She says that she has never felt pressure from her agency to keep thin “because I’ve never not maintained my weight, but I’ve heard other girls get lectured for being too thick”. When asked what size is considered “too thick”” she said “depends on he booker you’re talking to…there’s one Asian guy who I would say is 5’8, 115 and needs to lose at least 5”.
Apparently, males in the modeling industry have some of the same worries that females do. Brian (name has been changed), Public Relations major at New Paltz, and Hollister store model was asked about his own personal issues with the pressure to look good. “I used to go to Hollister’s web site and stare at the guy in the background and that was how I stopped myself from eating, or told myself to keep working out”, Brian says. When asked if he knew anyone else that will look at pictures of supermodels for inspiration he said “mostly girls which is actually really, really bad. My media ethics professor is also a writer for the Poughkeepsie Journal and she did a piece on eating disorders and how they effect older women and she talked to people who worked at one of the eating disorder facilities where like, really bad cases go and they told her that pictures of super thin models are what patients try most desperately to sneak in”. If this is the case, these skeletal images are clearly having some effect on the people who see them.
For some time now, doctors have worried about the negative effects that these super-thin media images may have on people, mainly young girls. In the PBS film Dying to be Thin, it is stated that “It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The popular television show ‘Friends’ played on anorexic chic in an ad that was soon pulled.” The ad to which is referred to is a billboard with a picture of the three female leads of “Friends”, all very thin, hugging and smiling. Above them was the caption “Cute anorexic chicks”. An advertisement making light of such a serious disease is not only distasteful, it can also be very dangerous. In the movie, Dying to be Thin, Doctor Ruth Striegel-Moore goes on to explain that “In some ways we all have distorted views of what is beautiful and repeated exposure to a particular image teaches you to like that particular image and we have become so used to seeing extremely thin women that we have learned to think that this is what is beautiful”.
What may have been considered very thin ten to fifteen years ago is today’s media norm. Everyday the public is bombarded with images of celebrities and models alike, most of which appear far thinner than the average adult female. Some of these celebrities have been surrounded with speculation of eating disorders, however, this seems to only heighten the public’s fascination with them. In an interview for the Journal of Gender Studies with women who had eating disorders, one woman noted “The media criticized Posh Spice for losing a lot of weight, yet, at the same time, they also used pictures of her going to fabulous occasions in stunning dresses with superstars, so there must be nothing wrong in the media’s opinion with being too thin if they show pictures like that”. As sad as that perspective is, there is plenty of truth to it. People, especially females, constantly eat up whatever the magazine covers show, and what they show for the most part is very thin, very glamorous women. Though Victoria Beckham, or “Posh Spice” has in the past been criticized for her thin figure, these days people have become not only accustomed to her body, but many women are now in pursuit of making theirs just like hers. Victoria Beckham just recently released a book called “That Extra Half an Inch” which is filled with her beauty secrets. By the look of book stores, stacked with shelves of the book in the front of the store, the response is frighteningly promising. It is a disappointing but accurate reflection of today’s society, in which a book of fashion tips sells better than a novel.
An article in New Statesman included information from “a study of 3,200 young women carried out in February this year (2007) by Girlguiding UK, over half of 16-to 25-year olds said the media made them feel that ‘being pretty and thin’ was the ‘most important thing’”. Many people empathize with this feeling as is evident in interviews and studies of the effects of the media. “ ‘There’s no question younger girls are getting this message’ says Murnen, who has studied this for 15 years. ‘We have done studies of grade-school girls, and even in grade 1, girls think the culture is telling them that they should model themselves after celebrities who are svelte, beautiful and sexy.’ Some girls can reject that image, but it’s a small percentage: 18% in Murnen’s research” (USA Today). Sarah Murnen was quoted again in Current Events saying “The promotion of the thin, sexy ideal in our culture has created a situation where the majority of girls and women don’t like their bodies”. In an article in the Informer a student was quoted as saying “Girls think that because they are not stick thin, they are not beautiful”. Kathy (name has been changed), a girl who faced anorexia, said she “definitely noticed that the media is always the first to point out that someone is gaining weight” and when asked if she thought the media images had an effect on people she said “absolutely, without a doubt- I notice how they claim they’re trying to make it better, and they’re making it worse”. With so much evidence, it still remains difficult for the fashion world, or even the normal world, to admit that there is a problem.
Brian, from New Paltz says that part of the problem is that there is no real, hard evidence. “I think the problem is that there’s no way to prove that ads are causing eating disorders, how can you prove the impact of an ad? And usually what the ad is doing, and what the creators are trying to do, is create subconscious desires, so of course nobody is going to say ‘yeah that ad made me want to lose 20 pounds’ because it’s not something they’re aware of.” These types of technicalities are those which many against the use of super-thin models recognize and which many in the fashion world are banking on. In an article in Live Science, Benjamin Radford notes that “there is no way to physically ‘screen’ models for anorexia” and that “anorexia is a complex psychological disorder; young women can no more ‘catch’ anorexia from seeing thin models than they can ‘catch’ depression from watching an actress cry in a film”. This much is true, however, just because you can not “catch” an eating disorder does not mean that repeatedly seeing underweight models will not eventually spark a person to develop strict diets, which over time can progress to obsession over food, which often results in a full blown eating disorder. In Guernsey an article about one woman’s starvation diet of 500 calories a day in order to reach a super-thin model size, Dawn Porter, despite being told by some stylists, fashion designers and modeling agencies that “the size zero craze was a myth and people were not really starving themselves to be that skinny, she soon discovered that to be painfully, or perhaps deliberately naïve”. “Deliberately” would be the key word in that sentence, being that most fashion designers get away with using models that often suffer eating disorders, simply because of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” nature of the industry.
Of course there is the stable argument that not all models are anorexic, and not all fashion designers are neglectful, scheming people out to get what they want no matter what the price. There are many models who are born naturally tall, naturally lean, naturally gorgeous, and just what agencies have in mind. As far as the designers go, it is never easy being an artist, and they are simply doing what they need to do for the love of their art, and for what pays the bills. It is very possible that many are simply unaware of the severity of the situation with some of the skinny models today. Of course, as mentioned previously, even if a model does have an eating disorder one can not “catch” an eating disorder from these models. However, aside from the effect they have on everyday people, the pressure to be thin often has destructive effects on the models themselves. Though agencies and designers would never walk right up to a model and tell her to stop eating, to lose weight or to maintain a low weight, as was the case with Justine, is often encouraged. If by chance a model does have an eating disorder resulting in her slim figure, the silent approval of the designers and agencies is all she needs to feel that what she is doing to her body is “okay” or “normal”.
Aware of the dark side of the fashion industry, some models and even companies who advertise in fashion magazines are now speaking out against this kind of treatment of models. The famously loud-mouthed, self proclaimed “world’s first supermodel”, Janice Dickinson, has often been greeted with disdain from viewers of shows which she is a part of such as America’s Next Top Model. However, she is one of the few models that has personally come out into the open about the pressure in the modeling world to be thin, and about her own experiences with the drugs and eating disorders that helped her and other models get there. In her book Everything About Me Is Fake…And I’m Perfect she recounts how she “basically swore off food for the better part of two decades. That left me really, really hungry all the time. I chose to starve myself in my quest for perfection. What made it even worse was that I was a workout maniac” (36). She says “You’ve got to be less than a size 0, size wise to fit into those plus-priced designer clothes. I honestly believe that Valentino designs his clothes to begin at a size I would call a negative 12. Models know the drill when it comes to fitting into these outfits: you just ignore your aching stomach and drink water to kill the hunger pains” (37). As if that were not poison enough, she recalls being told by designer Calvin Klein that “models aren’t supposed to think” (49).
In Dying to be Thin, former fashion model, now plus-size model Kate Dillon talks about her struggles with anorexia, the day she was told to lose weight and her break from the world of skinny modeling. “I look beautiful; you would not look at that picture and see somebody who was feeling bad about themselves or someone who hadn’t eaten in two weeks. I mean I look at my face, my face looks so hollow and my eyes look like they’re bulging out and I just look so weak. That was the day that they told me to lose like ten or twenty pounds and I kind of knew that was crazy. I remember thinking ‘From where? Twenty pounds!? How am I going to lose twenty pounds?’ And I remember thinking ‘I don’t have to do this. What have I been doing the last couple of years?’” From the painful internal struggles of models who have felt the effects of the pressures, to those simply sitting on the outside, looking in, the scary skinny trend seems to be having a more vast effect. “When Frederique van der Wal, a former Victoria’s Secret model, attended designers’ shows during New York’s Fashion Week this month, she was ‘shocked’ by the waiflike models who paraded down the catwalk. They seemed even skinnier than in previous years”. When even models have the notion that something is wrong, chances are, something probably is. A 1996 New York Times article reported that “Giles Reese, the British Marketing manager for the Omega Watch Corporation, a unit of the SMH Swiss Corporation, said that his company would cease advertising in the British edition of Vogue, saying that its emphasis on ultra-thin models, typified by two features in the June issue, could encourage young women to develop eating disorders”. The company eventually reversed their decision, but just the idea of an advertiser willing to give up such great publicity shows just how serious this condition may be. In addition, the article was published in 1996, over ten years ago. The models have only got skinnier since then.
In the wake of the deaths of three runway models due to complications of eating disorders, many countries are now re-evaluating the safety and health of these models. One of these models was Ana Carolina Reston, a Brazilian model who at the age of 21, carried only 88 pounds on her 5-foot-8 inch frame. Her diet consisted of apples and tomatoes and her BMI was 13.4. In response to this type of tragedy, some places such as Madrid, Brazil, and Argentina, models with a BMI (Body Mass Index, which is a measure of height and weight) of lower than 18 are being banned from walking the runway, and many other locations plan to set similar laws (Current Events). Countries such as Great Britain, notorious for the super-thin trend, and the United States are having more trouble making that sort of screening legal. One of the many reasons is that skinny seems to sell. As a culture, we have become used to seeing incredibly thin women, so that is what we ultimately strive to become and look at as beautiful. In his interview, Brian applauded the efforts to make the normal body type appear more beautiful. “Dove has been trying to do that with their ‘campaign for real people’ and I think it’s been pretty successful, but even that will never be as successful as Abercrombie or Hollister because people have a fascination with unattainable beauty”. This is one of the core problems with this particular issue. The general public are supposed to be the change they want to see. The problem is they can no longer see straight because they have been so blinded by images of the ultra-thin. The public are their own worst enemies in this respect. They feel the pressure to be thin, but they keep buying into it, so the fashion industry and the media keep selling it.
Another issue is making proper judgments on which models are anorexic, and which ones are not. In the Live Science article Benjamin Radford goes over the process in which models would be “screened” for anorexia. “The women would be asked a series of questions, which- like drug use or any other topic the model may not want to admit to- could easily be evaded”. Even the BMI test has flaws. A person may be very tall but naturally thin, and produce a BMI that is too low to be allowed to be in a runway show. That person may not be anorexic or have an eating disorder of any kind; unfortunately these laws would stop them from getting a job. Even if these screenings were flawless, in the United States, there is still a major complication. Radford continues to explain that “in America such measures might be illegal. An employer can’t fire someone from a job or discriminate against that person because he or she has a disease”. This is the trickiest detail of all. Even if testing was flawless, it is true that denying a model a job due to anorexia, or any other discriminatory factor, would be completely illegal as well as offensive. However, technically, this means fashion designers are not allowed to turn away normal-sized or overweight women from modeling jobs either. They get away with it by using a simple phrase “You do not have the right look” or “You are not what we are looking for”. In a perfect world, the problem would be fixed by looking at the girls that are clearly sick and far too thin and turning those same phrases on them instead of the healthier girls.
Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and the problem remains unresolved. It is not as if models everywhere are dying everyday due to anorexia, but anorexia does have the highest death rate of all the psychological diseases. Even if no one was dying, that is still not reason enough to let girls continue to suffer in silence with their disorders constantly being reinforced. There must be action taken to stop this kind of image from being responded to with positive feedback. Even though, in the United States we could not fire the models for being anorexic, there would be no reason not to still have doctors backstage at the fashion shows to perform health exams on all the girls. If found that any girl being used in the fashion show was ill, or dangerously underweight, there could be large fines imposed on the fashion designer, the casting director, and the modeling agencies. It should become law that there must be medical assistants and psychologists backstage at shows and photo shoots, and an inspection from the Board of Health to make sure that designers are adhering to the laws. If these laws are broken and companies start losing mass amounts of money due to underweight, unhealthy models, they might think twice before using them for an ad or for a show. Perhaps at the casting, girls should be required to present health records so that even if the model were anorexic, and she was accepted, that would mean the designer or casting director had knowledge if there were any type of problem. Besides the threat towards the designers and agencies, models should be educated about eating disorders. Maybe there would be a positive improvement if eating disorders were no longer a “dirty little secret”. If there were psychologists and medical doctors at shows or photo shoots or even castings to talk to the girls about the dangers of eating disorders, perhaps it could become less of a problem.
Extreme as it sounds, progress has never been made without an extreme change or a war waged. If given the choice to wage war on the fashion industry or one’s own health, the obvious answer is the fashion industry. The bottom line is this: nothing will change until we demand change. They will never stop selling unless we stop buying. We will never be healthy while it is fashionable to not be. We are the cause, but we are also the potential cure. The war has been waged. Which side are you on?
