Skinniest models are banned from catwalk

WHY NOT ASK THE WOMEN IN THEIR THIRTIES?

http://www.femininebeauty.info/skinnyfashionmodels.htm

What about the models who are over 60? :(

But erm don't most people view Kate Moss to be unhealthily thin? She was the model who largely (!) inspired the waif look.

i say good for the spanish exhibition.

One problem is at the CEO level - there is, in the fashion industry, a kind of hivemind that takes over where there is a certain sense of 'bad edit' where people protect themselves by not being the one to be too edgy (the figurehead of the brand is the edgemeister, puh-leez) or what some would call 'worthy' - 'worthy' is the worst thing you can be, unless you want props for the work you're doing with blind orphans or something, and of course they don't go on the catwalk unless the designer carries one on at the end walk of his or her show.

BTW a look around the office I do most of my work in shows women who are both eating healthy foods (the fridge is packed and the staff kitchen/dining area is well used) and seem to be in the svelte end of the BMI (I'm 17.9 at present, just checked). We do have a male intern who is painfully thin, though.

While at the same time she said she hated her legs and wanted surgery on them (and was at pains to point it out was her decision and not influenced by the media or models).

Oh please.

Yes, it's troo -- the fash. industry elevates aesthetic considerations above pretty much everything else, and no, they're never going to be a champion for a realistic women's body type. Because it's not about women, it's about clothes. (I mean, various designers can go on about how they make clothes for this kind of [ideal] woman, or that one...but runway displays and the unveiling of collections etc is about the designer and his or her work, end of story). Most of all it definitely is not about celebrating the sexuality/desirability of average women.

Would the industry be different if it were run by straight men (which are pretty much all that's left, after we rule out the homos and the middle-aged professional women who're already there)? Probably, but it would be just as twisted by commercial/egoistic pressures...besides, we already have Details/Maxim/whatever the lad mags are these days. And the "average woman" (which is -- HELLO -- EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN ONE OF US) with her unique body and unique concerns is still on her own as much as everyone, of either gender, is...scapegoat or no.

Yes, though it's also about branding and social standing.

Most of all it definitely is not about celebrating the sexuality/desirability of average women.

OTM. It's about making the consumer think she's better than the average woman.

Someone once told me that the move to skinnier models was actually meant not to appeal to men. With curvier models people had been looking at the women's bodies, not the clothes, and they wanted to shift the focus.

Haha oh man it's a good thing for my computer screen I'm not drinking coffee right now.

(This person thought the idea backfired, obviously, helping to lead us to the current situation.)

(But it makes some sense to me, since personally I do usually find models to be too skinny and masculine-looking.)

Besides which this issue is becoming a bit vexed by another consideration: if the fashion industry is plotting to make us want to be skinny, they're doing a piss-poor job of it, as we're all fatter than ever. Are people seriously concerned that fashion is effectively promoting undernourishment, or are we just annoyed that those skinny fashion people are, like, rubbing it in?

I just don't buy that clothes can only look good on 14-year-olds with absurdly high metabolisms (to be generous). God help designers' delicate souls when those clothes get released into the wild.

AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary

For those inclined to want to be fashionable (which for most will consist of following not leading), no amount of convincing them of the tyranny of image consciousness will ever cause them to give it up first. It's like a town full of gunslingers where no-one wants to be the first to turn in their gun. This is further complicated by the fact that the freshness, vigor, and pulchritude of youth mostly can't afford high fashion which then becomes a prop for older women who have the money to differentiate themselves. To give it up is either to admit that you're too irredeemably ugly to compete or just too old. It is exactly the difficulty that average women have in keeping that slim that makes very slim models attractive to the wealthy and influential ladies who buy or deal in fashion. If you have the will, the money, the trainer, et cetera to achieve and maintain that image, you are in the 'elite'.

This is OTM x 1000, and I can trace it in my own thought-processes as an adolescent: "Aren't I supposed to find these women attractive? They're obviously high-status, after all."

Nabisco, there's a middle path between advocating some sort of conspiracy theory -- which I don't think the linked site is actually doing, really -- and acting like these things are handed down on stone tablets from on high. Surely a cursory survey of the past fifty years will reveal some correlation between overall trends and specific decisions made by specific people?

if the fashion industry is plotting to make us want to be skinny, they're doing a piss-poor job of it, as we're all fatter than ever.

Last time I checked, (1) the fashion and food industries are separate endeavors, and (2) advertising derives its power from the discrepancy between people's actual lives, and the idealized lives they're led to believe they ought to be having.

if we're going to buy the whole it-was-for-our-art explanation

Not "it was for our art", but "we wanted to sell more clothes". Again, not my argument, but I think it's a bit more nuanced than you're making it out to be.

You're right that plenty of guys are awed by fashion models, too, but please notice that that's why I said "the sexual tittilation" of men. The appeal of high-fashion skinny isn't about sexual tittilation, I don't think; it's about cultural tittilation. We confer it the status of high style and beauty and cultural value -- just like money -- and so people want it for those reasons. (Which may be tangled up with sex appeal, but in cases like these I think you can guess which dominates.) Men and women both confer this cultural value on it, in that women may feel like it's what they aspire to accomplish, and men may feel like it's what they aspire to have.

But just in terms of sex appeal to men, it seems like by and large the fashion-skinny woman is like a stiletto heel and the voluptuous woman is like a sneaker -- which is to say that while the fashion-skinny woman conveys all sorts of style and class and seems like a cultural accomplishment, the voluptuous woman is the one people feel good and enjoy (ahem) slipping into.

xpost MWhite exactly on the money, hence my problem with this:

advertising derives its power from the discrepancy between people's actual lives, and the idealized lives they're led to believe they ought to be having

Because this is exactly my point! It's not that fashion is simply handing down those ideals from on high. We could look at what you've just said from an entirely different direction -- that fashion is powerful precisely because people already hold these ideals. We're not just being arbitrarily brainwashed here -- we bring these ideals to the table, and we're incredibly easy to motivate by using them.

(Also one of the funny mixups I was trying to point out, above, is that technically we really medically ought to be skinnier, as a whole -- which, like I said, adds some vexation to this whole argument.)

(a) I'd argue that the most supportable reason for banning over-skinny models from runway shoes would be as a form of labor standard, if you want to argue that models are being asked to take health risks as a condition of employment.

(b) People often skip around the point that the clothes worn by these ultra-skinny models aren't always supposed to be the clothes YOU would wear; they're high-fashion ideals and aesthetics and fantasies that are deliberately distanced from your life, because they're ASPIRATIONAL; and when you pick up the catalogs and ads for places you might actually get some clothes, you see models somewhere between runway-skinny and your size, and clothes that throw you a small bone in terms of moving toward the fantastical ideals of the runway.

But you're not talking in any meaningful way about where the specifics of these ideals come from, just locating it in a general "us-ness" that doesn't shed light on the situation.

I mean, OK, maybe there are too many stories like this one, but there's (again) a world of difference between saying we're being "brainwashed" and recognizing that trends are often set by, like, specific people and specific groups, who make choices and push for particular things and generally use their influence and power to enact what they think is a Good Idea.

Of course the trends that don't have any resonance tend to die in the water, but that's not the point. Saying "liking skinny women as a status symbol is inherent in who we are as a culture" ignores two things: one, that we really ought to be able to trace where that came from (and that some of that will come from discrete, discernible events and groups), and two, that this is something that has swung radically back and forth in recent history, and I don't think there's been a massive sea-change in the essence of the Western world that's solely responsible for it. The ideal of seeking status remains constant, yes, but the specific symbols that connote status are quite changeable, and history abounds with examples of how those specifics have been manipulated.

And there's also this, an angle that none of us have discussed yet (have we?):

TVGO: Do you think a plus-size woman like Toccara has any hope of winning?

Julie: I applaud her because big is beautiful, but the harsh reality of the fashion world is they have skinnier models for cost reasons. When they make sample garments for the thinner models, they can use as little material as possible.

xpost: yes but where did that "ASPIRATION" come from? This level of skinniness hasn't always been a high-status signifier, and arguments like "It's the patriarchy" or "It's a product of a surplus of food" seem way too ideological and pat for my taste. Maybe "gay men like girls who look like boys" and "fashion designers tried to use women who seemed like aliens" are equally pat, but I don't see them as any more suspect than the other critiques.

It's like Slim Fast saying "we love fat birds!"

I've said it many times before, and I don't mean to minimize the very real damage down by the more extreme forms of weight managment, but my ex-wife who modelled and many of her friends were skinny freaks. They were just made that way and I get a tad annoyed when people who are neither seriously aspiring to be designers or work for the fashion media or be models or what not think that they're entitled to tell those people what to do or what kind of decisions to make. I'm 6'2" and around 170 pounds, should I have considered being a linebacker or a jockey or suggested that horseracing or American football would be morally or aesthetically improved if people more like me were?

Brilliant!

http://www.style.com/slideshows/fashionshows/F2006CTR/CDIOR/RUNWAY/00090m.jpg

http://www.style.com/slideshows/fashionshows/F2006CTR/CDIOR/RUNWAY/00160m.jpg

"Play your cards right."

MWhite -- I think my point with models was just that any argument you make for banning skinnies would have to be about the conditions of the models themselves, not about their supposed responsibility to realistically portray zaftig Goth bubble-skirted lobster-women with curves, etc.

http://www.gweep.net/~saki/albums/flasks/CCCP_flask.sized.jpg

Same with big asses, small boobs - the ads just zoomed in on this one part that you probably wouldn't notice and made a massive deal out of the fact that you shouldn't be noticing it. GR.

Also, "real women" mdoels in magazines sticking up for "real women" by saying stuff like "men don't fancy skinny girls". Just lovely to read when you can't put on weight for trying but sadly don't have the rest of the model package!

It's been mentioned deej.. Try google for a proper explanation.

-- deej.. (clublonel...), September 16th, 2006 9:15 AM. (later)

I skimmed over this and thought you wrote 'ham'.

I think you're mistaken. They are aspirational for us, but by and large the designers are not (directly) catering to us (and our fantasies) but to their rich clientele. These clothes ARE bought by people. Not you and I but still people. It's not only aspirational, it's in fact largely a business, Nabisco.

Also to say that Kate Moss is healthy is a bit naive. It's not because she has been skinny all her life, that you have to ignore her BMI which is under the healthy range. Of course BMI isn't everything, you also have to focus on other aspects (such as the content of her fridge).

Ah, come on. There's a world of difference between making the best of what you've got and being so dissatisfied with it that you would undergo major lifestyle changes in order to look like Barbie. I'm no fan of major chemicals companies, but I do think that campaign is more along the lines of "you're going to buy moisturiser anyway, why not buy it from a company that tells you you're not repugnant?" I know I'm happy enough to be 65 when the time comes, and to look it, but I'd rather look like a fairly bright-eyed 65 year old than have children walk a little faster as they pass my house.

Because appearance is not everything in everyday life, appearance should not be everything in the fashion industry. WRONG.

Is it? She looks pretty healthy to me and not particularly skinny either.

You know Moss is a cokehead, right?

also what about all these girls putting themselves in stretchers so tht they can be as tall as catwalk models?

The furore revolves, I think, around the tension between a rapidly obesifying general population leading more sedentary lives and not having the discipline to save junk or 'treats' for occasional consumption, and how as a result 'thin' seems so close and yet so far. Models' clothes for catwalks are a UK size 10 which is US 5 or 6, which could fit women of a lot of different height categories. That's not tiny, by any means - so it's awful when a scrawny girl turns up in one on the catwalk wearing this Very. Average. Size.

My own BMI is under this limit even at my waterlogged time o'month, so I can't take it that seriously. However, this is because I've always had balanced dietary habits and love food.

What's wrong with a manly inside leg and waist measurement (maybe with chests thrown in where appropriate)?

-- Squirrel_Police (goblinatri...), September 19th, 2006.

INSIGHT

Thankfully shops have intoduced the Tall and Petite sections in recent years, but they're not everywhere and where they are, they don't exactly have an extensive range.

Answer me this: why can you get a 36" leg jean in Topshop but not Topman?

So, in closing, comparing size 10s (or 6s) we've all purchased to the supposed-same size on the runway isn't really accurate, just as BMIs are pretty generally a shitty way to judge someone's health.

Different people are different sizes by nature, and it's unfair to label ALL "underweight" people or ALL "overweight" people with a nasty label because of this. Yes, it'd be nice if the fashion world would show some more varied body sizes, but as several people have already pointed out, there's a big weight difference in the type of models you see on runways and the types you see in catalogs and many advertisements (and there's a whole new thing thrown in the works when Monica Belluci and Scarlett Johansson are suddenly getting tons of runway and print work). It's not denying that there are a lot of young women trying to break into modelling who are starving themselves, but it's not all of them and it's a bit unfair to go on these BMI or weight-based rampages that the media seems to like to do once or twice a year.

The only good thing about being a complete lardarse is never, ever feeling even the slightest obligation to pay attention to what's fashionable. I think I save a lot of money that way. Which I then, of course, spend on cakes.

it's kind of a swingy swingy, is it lardarse or pro-ana??? Who can say!

Actually, I think there have been times in my life when tomatoes, booze and cheese were the only things I ingested that had any caloric count.

You totally missed the point. The point was made, earlier, that models where size 5, which isn't that bad, right, compared to size 2 or size 1. but for a tall person, tall 5 is extrememly tiny.

Sizing is based on the average buyer of the line in question, basically. I am like a size bigger than Ally (I'm 5'9") but if I get something at the mall like Banana Republic I get a 4-6, which just tells me how much they've had to adjust based on the averages - in vintage even from the 80's I usually have to find a 10 just to fit in the shoulders 'cause I have a large frame.. But a higher end line today I'd usually go size 8, which is huge in their terms, isn't it.

from a blog I really like -
The myth of vanity sizing
Fit and sizing entropy

-- Squirrel_Police (goblinatri...), September 21st, 2006.

if ally has been demanding your banning 1) that's another name on the list 2) what could be more rational?

xpost oh snap