The Weight Debate

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So all those who follow the news, especially here, these who follow fashion have heard it in multiple forms. Models are too skinny. The fashion world needs more plus sized models. They set a bad influence. The fashion world is evil. Or maybe a little bit of, we're all lovely and wonderful. It's the damn Americans who need to loose weight. Either way Razz

Here at FMD people seem pretty relaxed about it, with a good middle ground (well, not everyone, but that's okay Smile

).

Anyways, I wanted to start a thread up so I could post all of these news clippings and quotes and opinions I see everywhere.

So let the mildly trite debate begin.

Posts: 1677

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Last night, Zac Posen, Aerin Lauder, Vogue's Tonne Goodman, agency executive David Bonnouvrier, casting director James Scully, and model Doutzen Kroes sat around a table in Chelsea discussing models' health and tiny sample sizes. Nobody uttered the words "eating disorder."
Except once, that is, because there was apparently no way for Diane von Furstenberg to introduce the event moderator, Dr. David Herzog, without mentioning that the prevention and treatment of eating disorders happens to be his area of specialty.
The panel talk was part of the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Health Initiative. The CFDA began convening these meetings annually in January, 2007, which was shortly after two models in South America, Ana Carolina Reston and Luisel Ramos, died of complications from eating disorders, and just before a third, Eliana Ramos, was killed by the same disease.
Everyone on the panel basically agreed that models' health can be at risk in the industry, and that the influence of fashion and modeling on the wider culture is clear. "I think that the health initiative is vital," said Goodman, who is herself a former model. "I have a 14-year-old daughter." Bonnouvrier spoke of the "complicated moral and legal challenges" presented by the industry's reliance on an often underaged and impoverished female workforce. Kroes, who began modeling at the ripe old age of 18, said, "I was told lots of times to lose weight. There was always that statement, 'You'd be great, but you should lose a few pounds.'...There are naturally skinny girls, but not all of them [are that way]. And I'm not one of them." Scully, who cast his first show in 1983, put it the most bluntly of all: "Things are very seriously wrong right now."
"I can open up any magazine or pick any show and tell you what girls are taking Adderall, how many girls are taking Vicodin, how many girls are throwing up, how many girls are carrying flasks," he said. "Girls are really resorting to incredibly dangerous things."
Agreeing on the nature of the problem is one thing, but did anyone have any solutions? "Collective responsibility" was invoked, as was the image of the ouroboros, eating its tail. "When you're dealing with a sample size, as it comes to Vogue magazine to be photographed, I'm actually at the end of a process that has preceded me," explained Goodman at the start of her talk. That statement would imply that someone like Posen should be at the start of the process: that if designers simply cut their samples a little bigger, and booked healthier, fully post-pubescent girls for their shows, then those models would become in-demand and standards would change. Not so, said Posen, who explained that designers are under pressure to conform to the norms of the industry, and that they often look to magazines to define the zeitgeist. Then he added, "I am often challenged, you know, by what is cool. And that usually comes down to the image makers, and that usually comes down to the new—" here he paused, as if searching for just the right word, "youth of the time."
"But there is something that's called too young," averred Dr. Herzog. "And maybe too vulnerable."
"On both sides," replied Posen. "I think the designers are vulnerable as well!" How, exactly, a designer with money, influence, connections, a voice both within the industry and in the wider culture, who not only finished high school but probably attended college, is equally as "vulnerable" as a Ukrainian teenager who is living out of a suitcase in a model apartment and falling by the day into ever more significant debt to an agency that could theoretically drop her at any moment, Posen failed to quite explain. "It's a fine line, you know, but at the end of the day, health is great."
During the Q&A section, I found myself wanting to cheer on Anna Wintour. "I'd like to ask the whole panel a question," she announced in her clipped accent. "I asked someone who works a lot with the shows if the Initiative was helping the problem at all. And I very sadly report that this gentleman said, No, it wasn't. So what I would like to know is what can we do to help the problem. Because obviously we're not doing enough. Because we're not making progress." A female designer in the audience pointed out that the problem was solvable by the very people in the room, if in fact they had the will. "Trends start by agreement. We keep saying 'They started it,' but we are 'they.' We are they."
Bonnouvrier stressed that the incredible shrinking model we've all seen on the runways over the last 5-10 years is the result of the tremendous change the industry has undergone since the breakup of the former U.S.S.R. "That trend was made possible by the fact that agencies and scouts were able to start traveling to countries that had just recently opened their borders and lifted the travel restrictions on their cities. As opposed to the members of the European Union and the U.S., which had laws mandatory laws regarding schooling and minor labor, these countries for the most part had very few of those. And the result was a flood of ill-prepared, 15-years-old [models], who had a very short lifespan in this industry. They quickly realized that, you know, once they crossed the threshold from 17 to 18, their bodies were gonna morph into those of a younger woman, and they had very little recourse but to take a drastic action."
Scully, who has in the past said, "Let's stop treating models like greyhounds we plan to shoot after a race," agreed that the injection of younger talent has destabilized the industry and left models disempowered. In casting his fashion week shows, this season Scully saw 179 models — and 109 of them admitted to being 17 or younger. Seventy-five said they were under 16. All of these girls were, he said, un-castable. (He even cut a "19-year-old" who turned out to be just 15 from a show cast.) "I can't tell a girl who's never kissed a boy to go on a runway and be sexy. That's insane."
In addition to the sometimes inappropriate nature of the work, the constant influx of new labor means models' careers are telescoping. "You know, there are times when I will have to book a Karlie Kloss because she's exceptional, but what makes me sad is the disloyalty in this agency, and the way these girls are discarded as though they're meat. To me, for Karlie Kloss, what is to say what happened to Gemma Ward, what happened to Hilary Rhoda will not happen to her? We all love her today, but, you know, when she grows breasts and she turns 18 are we all going to turn on her?"
Another reason offered for the rise of the extremely skinny model was the diminution of the magazines. When Scully began in the industry, he said, magazines set the standards for models' size, and models were all over the magazines — not celebrities. As stars started to claim covers and pages during the last 5-10 years, magazines' fashion clout decreased, and, he says, influential stylists broke from magazines and started looking to shows to express their aesthetic.
"In the last few years," he explained, "there is a show in each major city that is now setting the standard." At these shows, Scully said, the average age of the cast is 13-17. The average weight of the models is 110 pounds. One unnamed show "has now started calling agencies to say they will not go see a girl who has a hip that is larger than 33". A teenage boy's waist is 32". 33" is almost — it's ridiculous. These are the people who are now setting the standard, because this girl gets this exclusive, or she has to be in this show, and these are the girls that everybody feels like they have to use." In case anyone is wondering, the houses Scully is most likely referring to are companies like Prada, Balenciaga, and Calvin Klein, who are all known for their reliance on extremely thin and extremely young show models.
While the use of underaged models — to give just one example, the Pole Monika Jagaciak was modeling internationally at 13, and walked for Calvin Klein and a gaggle of other New York designers by the time she was 15 — and the hypothesis of the malevolent stylist are both interesting explanations, neither, in my opinion, is entirely sufficient to explain the problem. While stylists may have left permanent positions at fashion magazines and begun to exert their influence on the shows, it doesn't necessarily follow that somehow during this transition, they began to formulate their alleged skinny agenda. What was preventing them from promoting an über-thin look all along, at the magazines? We need to determine what else changed to make that possible. And as for models' ages, well: like Crystal Renn told me after the talk, "You can have an eating disorder at any age." Renn, now a successful plus-size model, spent years battling an eating disorder while she was in her teens. And models have always been extremely young: Carmen Dell'Orefice was on the cover of Vogue at age 15. In 1947. Brooke Shields was 14 when she began modeling. So was Niki Taylor, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington. Some of these women only modeled part-time during their high school years, but my instinct is that age alone is not able to explain the sudden and dramatic change in the ideal model weight since the turn of the millennium.
My guess is that the internationalization of the industry has led to the plummeting of wages — most runway shows, after all, pay only in "trade" — and a sudden power shift away from the models, both of which mean even girls' health is negotiable.
Kroes returned to the question of sample sizes. "I probably fit the sample size once. When I was 11," she deadpanned. "But I was 18 [when I started modeling], and already being told to lose weight. And I was skinnier back then." Although Kroes walked for a number of designers when she entered the industry, including Dolce & Gabbana and Versace, she was never known primarily as a runway girl because of her size, which deviated ever so slightly from the accepted 34"-24"-34" norm. (Or the 33"-23"-33" norm that we seem to be heading toward today.)
"It was crazy, because I looked in the mirror, and I liked the way I looked. So I had a meeting with my agent, I call it the so-called 'ass meeting.'" The audience laughed. "Because, I had one! It was there." Rather than try to lose weight by unhealthy means, Kroes — who was by that time already extremely successful — and her agent, Bonnouvrier, agreed to pursue work with her body the way it was. She now works for companies like Victoria's Secret and L'Oréal — big money brands that have little influence over the body type seen on the runway and in most magazines. "I hope after what I've done, I have chosen that I want to have a healthy lifestyle with the body that I have, and work around it, and I hope there will be more opportunity for girls to have a choice like that," said Kroes. Bonnouvrier said, "Of course you have someone like Doutzen and she is untouchable. But the models won't talk. There will be retribution sooner or later."
Model Coco Rocha, in the audience, said that she had faced significant backlash following her talk at the CFDA's Health Initiative of two years ago. (Rocha then admitted having taken diuretics and eaten unhealthily little in order to further reduce her modeling weight.) "I think people did listen to me, but people were either really pleased with me, or they hated me for it." Industry folk told her, "'How could you say such things?'" And Rocha is one of the most successful models working today. Imagine, then, the vulnerability of an average model, someone with no public profile, on this issue.
Dr. Herzog was careful to explain that all eating problems are "complex" and none is attributable to any single factor. (Diane von Furstenberg set the tone for the evening in many ways when she lamented in her welcoming statement that fashion is "often blamed" for promoting a body type that almost nobody, not even many professional models, can maintain in safety — in a tone of voice that implied she thought the blame was somehow less than warranted.) "Before I came here this evening," said Dr. Herzog, "I was having a bite to eat, and I was sitting across from someone who was about to go to a casting at 4 o'clock, and started to talk to her about modeling. And she sort of gave me a little sense of that community — the modeling community. And to some degree, how sophisticated the individuals are, who are models. And that's not always understood by the wider population."
Bonnouvrier brought the discussion back to age. "Someone 17 or 18 should barely be starting in this industry, and getting a first look at it and a first try. I think too much too soon is what sends them back home with a problem."
Posen interrupted him. "There's ideals that are so ingrained in our culture, though. Kate Moss was young and cute and hot, and underaged and modeling, and great. And that created a sensation. And that's going to be ingrained in our culture for a long time. So it is gonna be something there that people in fashion are going to be drawn to."
"But that's an exception. And the problem is when—"
Posen shot back, "People like exceptions in fashion."
Bonnouvrier continued: "The problem is when exceptions become standards."

From Jezebel.

Posts: 1677

From Jezebel.

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Lisa Hilton, an Oxford-educated writer, thinks we should all stop worrying and learn to love the size-zero model.

[A]re women really so pathologically stupid that they are unable to distinguish the fantasy of the runway from the realities of their own bodies? Arguably, the "size zero" debate is merely another side of the infantilized, hysterical box women thought they had clawed their way out of a century ago, an insidious means of suggesting that though we can run companies and governments we're still not quite rational creatures, too dainty and delicate to cope with the dissonances between the Bambi-limbed aspirations of the catwalk and our own wretched, cellulite-smothered carcasses.It gets worse. Hilton praises girls who probably suffer from eating disorders for their canny choice "to conform to the demands of their industry in order to maximize their earnings"; any questioning of the safety of the standards to which models are required to measure up is "patronizing and disempowering and reduces legitimate concerns over body issues to juvenile whining"; and, amazingly, the most powerful thing we could all be doing is to just shut up and consume. "We could just leave the models to get on with their job," writes Hilton. "Maybe the radical way to look at this season's shows would be to enjoy the spectacle, buy the frock and get on with something more interesting?" On the scale of contrarianism-for-contrarianism's sake, reading this piece, it's as if Slavoj Zizek got a partial lobotomy, mainlined five years of Vogue, and had a week-long hallucination about the "eating disorder lobby." Perhaps someone should tell Hilton she could make a career out of issuing trite "challenges" to "conventional wisdom." Then we'd at least know what and who to avoid at the bookstore.

Though Hilton pays lip service to the health issues presented by eating disorders, and states that sufferers deserve our "respect and support," the most serious problem with her wholly problematic argument is that she seriously under-reports the prevalence of eating disorders. Call her an eating-disorder skeptic: she cherry-picks data from a variety of studies to show that anorexia nervosa only affects 0.5% of the population, blithely ignoring the fact that anorexia is just one kind of eating disorder — bulimia and Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified are two others recognized in the DSM-IV, and there are plenty of people with disordered eating habits that affect their health, yet who do not meet all of the diagnostic criteria for the above. And Hilton completely ignores a much recent and unusually comprehensive study by the NHS, which found that 9.2% of adult women living in Britain had eating disorders. Hilton's eagerness to minimize the problem of eating disorders makes one rather doubt her intellectual honesty.

So, too, does Hilton's comparison of her 0.5% prevalence statistic for anorexia with the "39.4 million [American] women suffering from obesity." Obesity, as defined by the medical establishment, is a straightforward matter of Body Mass Index, not health: anyone with a BMI of 27.5 or higher is considered obese. A diagnosis of anorexia — which is, again, just one kind of eating disorder — involves fulfilling multiple clinical criteria. Anorexia is a disease. Obesity is an equation of height and weight, and an individual considered "obese" can be perfectly healthy. To compare the two groups is beside the point.

But Hilton isn't interested in making an argument based on accurate data. She's interested in criticizing fat people and recasting models who "choose" to subsist on too little food as "empowered" paragons of discipline. (She does this by quoting one former model who admitted that when she was walking for John Galliano and Tom Ford, she "lived on Diet Coke and apples for two years. For the couture, we had to get up at 4 a.m. to be sewn into the clothes and there was huge pressure to be thin. But I made a million dollars by the time I was 20, I bought a town house in Manhattan and put myself through Columbia. Does that make me a victim?" Perhaps Hilton does not realize just how small the modeling world is, but she might consider protecting her anonymous sources a little bit better, given the number of girls who did the couture shows, walked for those clients, and attend Columbia is, well — nevermind.) But the point isn't that the mainstream media is clamoring to paint models — and, by extension, women who approve of fashion — as "victims." Although some of the coverage of the so-called "size zero debate" is undoubtedly sensationalist and less-than-comprehensive, many writers are merely drawing attention to the fact that it is unfair and unsafe for an adult to ask a child of 14 to diet down to 95 lbs, and that it might well be unsound for the culture to idealize exclusively such a tiny point on the spectrum of female beauty. Hilton's only explanation for women who criticize the fashion industry's standards is far more prosaic: jealousy.

Another issue that Hilton completely ignores is the question of whether the modeling industry may well attract girls already predisposed to disordered eating — and what implications this might have for the industry's duty to be a safe working environment, if in fact it is the industry's diktats that can push a young and already vulnerable population into seriously unhealthy territory. It's not hard to look for anecdotal evidence of models with eating disorders; Crystal Renn, who lost her teen years to exercise bulimia and anorexia in order to fit into sample sizes, has said "Modeling, basically, pulled the trigger." Three models, Ana Carolina Reston, Luisel Ramos, and Eliana Ramos, died of complications from their eating disorders in 2007 and 2008; one had eaten only Diet Coke and lettuce for the week leading up to her death. Coco Rocha has admitted the use of diuretics to control her weight in the past. Other substances, especially Adderall, for energy without appetite, were commonplace when I was in the industry. Ali Michael, at 17, was sent home from Paris for gaining 5 lbs when she started to recover from her eating disorder, which had cost her her menstrual cycle. Natalia Vodianova's relationship with food changed dramatically when she began modeling — and her sudden, and unhealthy, post-pregnancy weight loss, both spurred her career to new heights and causef her hair to fall out. (When she regained 9 lbs, giving her a total weight of 115 lbs, her clients and agency were displeased.) The model pictured here, Natasha Poly, has not spoken publicly about her eating habits, but I included her photo to show just exactly what kind of beauty standard Lisa Hilton thinks is reasonable and harmless.

Broad-based studies are harder to come by; there are remarkably few surveys of professional models' eating habits and the prevalence of eating disorders. However, this one, published in Psychiatry Research in 2008 [PDF link], found that 18.1% of the 55 models questioned by researchers reported "important restrictive eating" during the previous three months, compared with only 7.2% of the control group, which was made up of women of the same age group and the same cultural background as the models. 60% of the models surveyed reported bulimic episodes in the same timeframe (so did 34% of the control subjects). 9% of models exercised to control their weight, 5.4% used laxatives and/or diuretics. 9% of models had "menstrual difficulties"; only 2% of the control group did. The study authors found that 12.7% of models had at least some of the symptoms of anorexia; 1.8% had all of them. An additional 5.4% of models had been diagnosed with, and received treatment or, anorexia in the past. 1.8% of the models met all the clinical criteria for bulimia; 3.6% met some of them. That's a total of 25.3% of models with some form of eating disorder. Now, 55 models is not a large sample, and more study is clearly needed before the prevalence of eating disorders within the industry can be firmly established. But it seems clear that, at the very least, disordered eating is vastly more common among models than the general population. In Hilton's tortuous construction, acknowledging the very serious health concerns this reality presents for many models is painting them as "victims."

Hilton compares female models with male athletes — some of whom are also required to maintain less-than-healthy physiques to make a living. 69% of jockeys skip meals, and 34% use diuretics for weight control, and — though Hilton doesn't mention it — there was also the death of 23-year-old NFL player Thomas Herrion, whose playing weight was 310 lbs, of heart disease and studies showing a heightened risk of heart disease among very heavy players. But rather than find these working conditions troubling, Hilton excuses them, joking that jockeys would "make any model agency proud," and pointing out that young men who choose to endure the physical risks of these professions are "admired" while models are "portrayed as irrational and deluded." Models aren't admired? It takes an especially nimble mind to at once buy into the persistent glamorization of modeling so completely that all problems, actual and potential, presented by the profession can be written off as the ravings of jealous haters, and simultaneously to deny that the profession is glamorized at all.

"Laying off the Krispy Kremes for a few years in order to shimmy into Paige jeans is hardly on a par with being unable to menstruate, but the rhetoric of the eating-disorder lobby insultingly blurs the difference between harmless faddiness and genuine disease," says Hilton. (This despite the fact that her own source — the only model she apparently spoke to for this story — had to do a lot more than "lay off the Krispy Kremes" to be employable under the industry's standards.) I hadn't heard of Paige jeans when I first read this piece, but it turns out the company has an interesting story: Paige Adams-Geller, the company founder and a former fit model, is an eating-disorder survivor. Adams-Geller's business is dedicated to the (still radical, in fashion) idea that no-one should have to starve to fit into their clothes. In fact, she sells a bracelet to raise money for the National Eating Disorders Asssociation that bears the slogan "Be Comfortable In Your Genes." Funny how Hilton missed that.

Posts: 618 Location: Wonderland

I don't believe plus-sized models are truely plus-sized. In fact, put plus-sized models in the real world, and they are truely just average sized.

I hate how in the modeling world, it's either you are incredibly, sickeningly skinny, or you have a large figure, but, yet, nothing in the middle. What about women out there who are normal sized?... But that's just my opinion.

Posts: 1677

I dig how extreme everything has to be.

Posts: 1677

Or that darn photoshopping issue, that likes to pop in every now and then.

Posts: 24 Location: San Diego

Interestingly enough, I've spent a lot of time in Asia (Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong) and the women there are, well.... small doesn't quite cover it.

In Thailand, for instance, the MEN weigh on average 110lbs (50kg).
Women weigh on average 88lbs (40kg). If a girl is 45kg (99lbs), she is considered pompuey (FAT).

Okay, they are also not tall....

The most interesting thing is that when you go into the 7/11 stores, you know how they have all those little knick knacks?? Well, in 7 (for some reason, they don't say 7/11), all of those little items are also small... little combs, small cupcakes, oreo cookies (only 3 to a pkg), small notepads, little tiny containers of milk, etc.

Its like little kids running the country!

Whenever I return from Asia, it feels like everyone has been inflated... It takes a few weeks to get used to it...

One of my friends is from Thailand and she says that everyone here (in the USA) tell her that she is too thin, while everyone at home (when she visits Thailand) tells her she is too fat!

Also, its very nice to know that EVERYONE in Asia is attractive (i.e. not fat). Only 1 in 50,000 people are fat there... while in the US, 40% of the population is OBESE (very very very fat).

One time, I returned from Asia and I walked outside the airport and I saw two extremely fat people (400lbs?) walking down the street. I panicked and nearly ran back inside to buy a ticket back to Asia!

My Canadian friends tell me that everytime they visit the US, they gain 10 or 20lbs (5-10kgs).

Granted, models shouldn't be bony-thin... but skinny isn't necessarily unhealthy...

I suppose it all depends on where you are from, what standards of beauty the society has.

Cool

Another interesting thing about Asia is that they seem to worship WHITE SKIN. I'm from San Diego and I am embarrassingly pale (I'm Irish), but when I am in Asia, women often come up to me and say, "I love your skin!" (men too, but I won't talk about that).

Shocked

You know how they have tanning creams here? In Asia, they have bleaching cream that is supposed to make your skin whiter. All of their makeup products have whitening powder in them, supposedly to make your skin white!

Rolling Eyes

Posts: 198

OMFG!!! half ton woman on the runway! ew =(

why would anyone wanna look at that... i mean models are looked up to for their beauty. Just cuz the average woman is larger then a model doesn't mean they shouldn't aim to be healthy...

and for those people who think that they set a bad example...bullshit, i think it's the over weight people in "fashion" that set a bad example, these are the people that make others believe that it's ok to be fat.

just cuz a small percent of girls take dieting to the extreme doesn't mean that it should change the entire industry.

Posts: 198

wow thats gross, idk why i had to quote that picture, looking at it once was quite enough for me =p

Posts: 1677

Mark, thank you for sharing. People will sometimes tell me the same thing but neglect the fact that I'm short (and a vegan). So do you think that it's more of an American issue with the super-thin (and slight European attitude, with the Paris fashion week ban)?

And I would also agree that there are some limits, I would hope that no one here would argue with that.