No skinny models please!

By: Tripti Narain

So, officially its over! The world’s first ban on overly thin models at the Madrid fashion show was long overdue. Now, the skinnies are out and full-bodied lasses are in! The super skinny look that was glamourised by this fashion industry itself has realized to its horror the dangerous implications when one of the models died during a fashion show due to anorexia, an eating disorder. This is a serious medical condition in which girls starve themselves for days and lose excessive weight. It has very adversely affected our youth. The industry of beauty and luxury turned into famished-looking people who looked pale and sick.The fashion ban has once again shifted focus to this long-standing problem that has become a major disorder with young girls in particular. Activists have pointed out that anorexia and bulimia are real diseases that are killing young girls everyday. In order to sport that skinny, chiseled, gazelle-like figure, the girls starved themselves for days often consuming mere salad in the entire day! Lets face it. We are living in a thin obsessed world where skinny models are idolized for their ‘ideal’, mostly unattainable (read fictional) figure with super thin waistlines! What brought about this change in society’s image of what the appearance of a "beautiful and desirable" woman should look like? That is not a difficult one to answer. Scarecrow type models with corset-thin waistlines splashed across TV screens, magazines and hoardings. When designers first show their collections at runway shows, they tend to use models who are little more than spectral wisps, expressionless hangers for their clothes. The thinner the model, the more popular she is in terms of complying with the fashion standards. The fashion fraternity is filled with such models. They are alarmingly thin. Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Snejana Onopka, Natasha Poly and Hana Soukupova, models in demand among the fashion designers who showed their collections in various shows, appeared so gaunt and thin that their knees and elbows were larger than their thighs and pipe cleaner arms, and their bobbling heads with stone-expression face on the frail bodies! One could actually count their ribs like in the pictures of famished children in Mogadishu (sic…actually!!!) Fashion is a mirror and teenagers imitate what they see on the catwalk. Models shaped like exclamation marks contribute directly to eating disorders and low self-esteem among teenage girls. Catwalk models are making themselves ill through starvation to comply with “the look”. If teenage girls feel compelled to be thinner, it is in pursuit of an ideal. Anorexic models have become a fashion standard because they represented a more extreme `eye-catching` version of attractively slender "normal" women. The gap between the ideal body shape and the reality has grown wider than ever. To a large extent, it is this fashion industry that should be blamed because the starved look was spun from the linen produced by this glamour industry. This fetish for famished-look of the models was quite contagious as even the Hollywood celebrities craved for “the look”. Celebrities like Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Mischa Barton have all been subjects of tabloid headlines asking, “Are they too thin?” In all likelihood, the answer is yes, but that does not stop magazines from displaying their pictures or designers from casting thin models in their shows. But the growing criticism of these fashion agencies employing the emaciated models seems to be changing the trend gradually now. Wafer-thin models are loading their plates with lasagna and chocolate truffle to get some curves. Even pop star Victoria Beckham better known as Posh Spice, who used to take pride in her pencil-thin figure and thrived on being thin, has understood the importance of big boobs so as to fulfill her American dreams of becoming a diva in the land of Pamela Anderson. She is desperate to be considered a style icon after her pop career took a dive and is trying to gain some curves at the right places as seen in her recent snaps! After widely publicized Madrid ban, the pressure was also on London fashion labels to choose girls that would send the right signal to critics. Now, there are reports of Edinburgh Fashion Festival, fashion capital Milan and very recently Paris Fashion week towing the same line. Everyone from designers to doctors are debating the issue of super-slim "size zero" models. "Maybe we`ll return to the look of girls who are shaped more like women and it can stop the fashion of girls who look like children and we can return to women of glamour," said couture designer Franck Sorbier in Paris. The news might bring a sigh of relief for the famished models who struggled to stay thin and continue modeling and would not fear losing their jobs if they binged at parties. And not to mention those voluptuous models who thought till now that they were grossly misfit in the industry. With little mathematics, models who are healthy but have a genuine lean frame will be able to participate in the shows. The Spanish ban demands models have a BMI (Body Mass Index-height to weight ratio) above 18 to participate in shows. The overly thin, “sick” looking models will have to eat and gain that curvaceous look to sashay on the ramp again. Lets hope with the change in the trend, curvaceous models will become the look du jour this season and on the ramp we find beautiful and healthy models catwalking. But the most interesting part is that now the designers might have to start designing clothing that can actually be worn by real people!!! So relax girls, you can eat now!