Our Bodies: Mental Problems.
Madrid bans too-thin models from catwalk, which means any woman with a BMI below 18 is not permitted to work during Madrid's Fashion Week.
"Organisers said they wanted to 'help ensure public opinion does not associate fashion, and fashion shows in particular, with an increase in anorexia, a disease which, along with bulimia, is considered ... as a mental and behavioural problem.'"
Which is nice; girls already have enough problems figuring out their bodies, themselves, entrenched in a popculture where skinny is great, and skinniest is the greatest (see: the size zero trend of lo, these past few years).
But I am not sure this is the way to do it. And I am a little tired of the crazy-schizophrenic way we deal with body issues. If you're too fat, you have mental problems. If you're too skinny, you have mental problems. The takeaway here is, I believe, that if you have a body? You have mental problems. Awesome.
"Organisers said they wanted to 'help ensure public opinion does not associate fashion, and fashion shows in particular, with an increase in anorexia, a disease which, along with bulimia, is considered ... as a mental and behavioural problem.'"
Which is nice; girls already have enough problems figuring out their bodies, themselves, entrenched in a popculture where skinny is great, and skinniest is the greatest (see: the size zero trend of lo, these past few years).
But I am not sure this is the way to do it. And I am a little tired of the crazy-schizophrenic way we deal with body issues. If you're too fat, you have mental problems. If you're too skinny, you have mental problems. The takeaway here is, I believe, that if you have a body? You have mental problems. Awesome.
posted by anne at 12:21 PM
15 Comments:
I think it is a good thing that they're looking for models that aren't emaciated. How many women actually fit that mold? Very few.
We can't keep showing our younger women that the only size is a size 0 and expect them to think their bodies are okay. The size 0s of the world have plenty of bodies to model after, the magazines, television, and movies are filled with tiny women. Why should we show slightly larger bodies? Hell, we should be showing the full range of bodies, and appreciating them for what they are.
Yes, of course, wouldn't it be a wonderful world if all sized bodies were on the catwalk? And then we'd all hold hands and sing and eat cake together.
Unfortunately, what they're doing is discriminating against thin girls as much as they would against larger sized girls. Banning them from the runway because they're too skinny? Again, I applaud the earnest thought behind the message, but in actual practice - that doesn't sound right to me.
It especially seems unfair -- not that I am overwhelmed with sympathy for models -- to ban too-skinny models when you consider that many of those models got that skinny only so they could be models in their first place. They had to be skinny enough to get signed by an agency and to be considered workable. And now they're being penalized for, basically, being too qualified for their jobs.
I actually think this is a step in the right direction. It is, after all, a public health issue, and I think there's no reason governments shouldn't regulate the fashion industry just like they regulate employee safety in other types of workplaces. Whether it's outright stated or not, it is implied that as a fashion model you virtually unemployable if you are under 5'8" and wear more than a size 4. With rare exceptions, a woman has to be anorexic to maintain those proportions. Factories and mines liked employing children back in the day because they were cheap and their small size came in handy for certain jobs. A lot of people acknowledged it was wrong to use children this way, but no business wanted to lose its competitive edge, as long as there was a chance someone might continue to employ children. Making it illegal to use anorexic models levels the playing field by taking the current ideal out of play for everyone (and BMI 18 is still plenty unachievable for most of us).
I agree, though, that the way our culture lurches around on body issues drives me crazy - especially when some actress who's been hounded into anorexia so she can keep working starts getting picked on for being too thin. Of course, I also hate how these women, when asked, invariably swear they are just naturally tiny, and no, they don't go for weeks consuming only coffee and cigarettes while spending four hours a day at the gym. That is crazy-making. Not that I feel they owe me an answer or anything - it just annoys me.
You know, I don't think it's a bad idea to showcase women with a more typical body type than your average fashion model, but if the premise here is that they're eliminating unhealthy models and therefore bad role models... I also don't think what they're doing makes sense.
If they want to make the weights of fashion models a public health issue (which I'm really not sure I agree it is), then I think they at least ought to be judging the models by their actual health, not simply by their BMI, which takes only height and weight into account.
Sure, you're a bad role model if you get skinny by smoking constantly and snorting cocaine. If you just happen to have skinny genes, should you be banned from the runway for making the less-skinny feel bad?
If what they really want is to represent healthy women, I would never argue with that. Give them random drug tests, then, like athletes, and mandatory regular physicals. Hell, give 'em psych screenings for all I care. You'd probably rule out more models that way than the other. But you can't determine someone's overall health using long division, and I think it's silly to think that that's what they're doing.
I think they used a reasonable standard: models with a BMI under 18 will be turned away. A BMI of 17.5 or less is one of the criteria for diagnosis of anorexia. Under 18 is considered "underweight."
On the other hand, the models will still be size 0, 2 at most.
Fashion is fashion and therefore liable to change – the raising and lowering of hemlines; the girly frock one season versus the mannish suit the next; grey becomes the new black till some other colour does. Only one thing hasn't changed for the duration of my lifetime – and since I grew up in the era of Twiggy, I think you can guess what that is.
I'm well known for running my gob about the promotion of fat as a moral issue by the media and medical profession. But I seriously think it's time the fashion industry was made culpable for its part in promoting profoundly unhealthy ideals. In my opinion, that is a moral issue because countless lives are lost or diminished because of it.
If this culminates in banning the downright Belsenesque from the catwalk then tough, frankly. Six-foot, size 2 women make up a microscopic proportion of the female population compared to the millions who are made to feel like crap every time they look at a magazine, many of whom do cultivate eating disorders - as do some models.
But lets forget about BMI and spot-checks to see if models are doing coke and/or laxatives and focus on size pure and simple. I've said on another thread that one of the reasons models are so tiny is because the samples manufacturers provide are always the smallest they make and therefore the models have to be able to fit the clothes provided. I think it's high time that changed – by law, if that's what it takes to halt the rising tide of body neurosis. Just because something has become a tradition doesn't mean it's one worth keeping up
And nuts to the designers who feel this would constitute a threat to their creativity. I would suggest that if they're incapable of designing clothes that flatter the public they're supposedly designing for then they're not being creative enough.
OK, Jen, you're boring us now.
Why? Because you've missed the point already, three times.
It's Fashion Week. Don't you have a hemline length to obsess over?
I don't know who "us" is, but it's definitely not those of us who run this site. Please don't attack other commenters.
Jen, my cousin is a stylist, married to a fashion designer who, for some years, worked for Stella McCartney, so there's no need to clue me up. Indeed, next week, I'm looking forward to accompanying my cousin to some of the shows at London Fashion Week. (Gah! What to wear...)
But in case you didn't realise, I'd like to clarify that I'm not just referring to the rarified world of high fashion. I'm referring to what minces down the catwalk in the name of the brands we less affluent mortals can afford. Because the criteria for samples, ergo models, remain the same.
I strongly doubt, in the case of high street brands, that the sample pieces differ greatly from what ends up on the racks in the shops, (other than in size, of course), but even if they do, it's irrelevant. If a designer expects to earn a living it is still their primary role to design clothes that will suit those who will ultimately be buying them. And, if they elect to pour scorn on those customers by showing their creations on women who look barely capable of menstruating without acknowledging the pernicious, far-reaching and widely documented problems these role-models are causing, it's time for a well deserved boot up the arse.
But let's return to haute couture for a minute, shall we? We all know it's a relatively tiny proportion of humanity who can afford to buy and are expected to be seen wearing these creations. And who makes up a sizeable portion of those who do wear the clothes? Celebrities. Routinely seen starving themselves to death in any magazine you care to mention - in tragic, slavish emulation of the models who have oftentimes themselves been forced to starve themselves in order to fit into those tiny catwalk samples. It's a vicious circle and ultimately it's of little import whether these models are anorexic or not. If they look anorexic they are not healthy role models for women and girls per se.
I'd also like to reiterate a point I made on another thread because it refers to how clothes are marketed to plus-sized consumers. I believe there is such a huge disparity between the aspirational imagery routinely used to tempt non-plus-sized shoppers and our own fat reality that, depite saying we want to see our own likenesses in fashion shoots, many of us respond negatively when we get what we ask for. It's too radical a jump and it shocks us; possibly even confounds the sense of freakishness that being largely ignored by mainstream fashion imbues us with. This needs to change for the mental wellbeing of all women. The longer fat women continue to shy away from our own image, the longer we will continue to be short-changed by the fashion industry; and the longer slimmer women will continue to view being fat as something to be feared.
I'm not saying clothes should be modeled by a procession of graceless uggos but a true diversity of body sizes among models is the only way forward. If images of fat women looking attractive, sexy and stylish were commonplace, the self esteem of women of all sizes would benefit.The stick thin ideal is not some immutable, inviolable sacrament. It's the
default setting for a lazy, egotistical industry with its head firmly planted up its own fundament.
Jen, I reiterate: high fashion has a direct, immediate effect on affordable high street fashion - from rip-off designs to the way the clothes are styled and photographed for magazines, catalogues and point-of-sale displays – therefore it influences us all.
It doesn't matter if we're talking Lacroix or The Limited, prolonged, repeated exposure to one extreme, atypical body-type bearing little or no resemblance to that of the majority of women so exposed, fosters insecurity and self-hatred on a massive scale.
BuffPuff's comment reminds me of the scene in "The Devil Wears Prada," where fashion mogul Merrill Streep dresses down newbie assistant Anne Hathaway by tracking the evolution of the "cheap" sweater she is wearing from its original high fashion origins to the third-rate ready-to-wear rack she bought it from. Haute couture absolutely influences all of fashion, all the way down to the cheap knockoffs. That's why we've all been wearing those horrible pants for five years now, that make anyone who isn't anorexic look like a "muffin top."
Anyway, nicely stated, buffpuff. I wish I'd said it, but I didn't, so I'll second it. :)
Cheers, Mary Garden.
I awoke this morning to the news that London Fashion Week is facing the same ban as Madrid. Some LFW organiser vox-popped by reporters was bellyaching about how unfair she thought it was that people should be"discriminating against Mother Nature", which I find exceedingly rich given that the fashion industry does precisely that.
Well, this new development, I think, will have very little effect at all on fashion of any kind. BMI is about as accurate for determining body-type as shoe size. The thing is, the kind of women who buy these clothes can probably afford to have them altered or even made in their own size; even bigger actresses and singers have fabulous wardrobes. You don't see Queen Letifah and Wynona Judd in the sort of frumpy, unflattering stuff so common in plus sizes. Those of us who can't pay for custom tayloring, however, are left with the fashion rejects. I don't believe this restriction is any more or less ethical than the ban on overweight women. I think plus sized modeling should much more prominent, and I think the cheap "knock-offs" of it should be designed by, good God forbid, fat women, so that they are flattering and comfortable for their consumers. Anyway, this doesn't effect me either way, because not only am I obese acording to BMI, but I am short. Plus sizes are too tall, petites have even less cute styles than plus, and my measurements, while actually in proportion for an hourglass figure, will never squeeze into the pencil straight lines of most every brand. Personally, I wish we could go back to the days when clothes were taylored from scratch to fit the precise measurements of the individual buyer, not mass-produced in shapes and sizes that don't really fit anyone at all. It's the clothes that need to be altered to accomodate the wearer, not the other way around.
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