Gaunt models? Blame the industry
By Robin Givhan
Washington Post
If anyone ever needed evidence of why industries should not be allowed to police themselves, the Council of Fashion Designers of America just provided it.
A few days ago, it released a "health initiative," which it called the "first step" in helping to ensure the health and safety of models. The guidelines are aimed at keeping dangerously thin — perhaps even anorexic — models off the runway.
The recommendations come after the deaths of two underweight South American models last year and after observers outside fashion circles voiced concern about the emaciated look of others. New York's proposal followed Madrid's decision to set a body mass minimum for women on Spanish runways and Milan's announcement that it intended to develop a nationwide campaign in Italy to fight anorexia.
The council offered a six-point plan that was pure mumbo jumbo, outlining educational workshops and the importance of eating your vegetables. That's a shame.
The last thing an industry as creative and adventurous as fashion needs is for heavy-handed bureaucrats or zealous activists to step in and try to dictate the size and shape of the models who walk the runways and appear in fashion magazines. But if models continue to look like cadavers, that may be inevitable.
The CFDA offers the following recommendations:
A PowerPoint presentation on the symptoms of anorexia and bulimia is not the solution to getting rid of sickly thin models. Nor can the answer be found in a crudites platter. As one model agent put it, the industry needs to start at the top of the pyramid. If there's no demand for skeletons on the runway, there won't be any skeletons.
Models are as thin as twigs because that's what a vast number of designers and fashion editors want — or at least tolerate. The industry has always liked thin, and over time eyes have adjusted to ever-shrinking physiques. The definition of thin has been redefined from the hourglass to the waif to the toothpick.
Runway samples for womenswear — and menswear — are substantially smaller than they once were. If a size 6 was once the standard, it is now more like a size 2 or even 0. For menswear, the standard was once about a 40 regular, but it has shifted to a 38. The silhouettes are even narrower in Europe.
If models want to work, they have to fit the clothes. They lose weight. The samples get smaller, they lose more weight.
No one expects the fashion industry to suddenly declare a size 8 the ideal figure. Where's the rarified fantasy in that? Designers like slender figures because culturally they are equated with wealth and youth. They are the easiest and most versatile to dress. But would a size 4 look so god-awful on the runway?
The fashion industry would have folks believe that this model-weight problem is complicated. But it isn't. It isn't necessary to get into a conversation about eating disorders. No one should expect designers and stylists to behave like doctors and diagnose anorexia and make referrals. All that is really necessary is common sense.
The fashion industry has to ask itself: Why do we want to be represented by a model who the average person would suspect is sick? Why shoot an advertising campaign using a model that women would pity rather than envy?
The fashion industry likes to point out that a lot of these models are naturally super-skinny because of their metabolism, age or genetics. So what? Pear shapes are natural, too, but the industry has no trouble rejecting them.
The industry needs to think of models as women — not as girls, mannequins, coat hangers or any of the other terms typically used to describe them. Think of them as women, and perhaps that's what they'll more often resemble.
