The fashion industry is a magnificent beast. Being a particularly visual industry, focus tends to fall on output, but rarely any thought is given to the business structures operating behind it, and how this affects the fashion itself. Fashion in the Western World can be interpreted as consumerism exemplified, with constant newness-couture houses to chain stores bringing out a constant stream of new collections each year. As any other industry dealing with art, fashion encompasses the age-old uneasy alliance of freedom of creative expression, and commerce. Especially with the world's economy the way it is now, the fashion industry needs to make money, regardless of whether a designer is feeling inspired or not. The belief in the industry, and promoted by fashion media, is the need to be ahead of, or at least follow, trends. It is a perfect belief to push product on, once consumers believe it.
This is why high-profile arguments against extremely thin, size 0 models in the industry intrigues me. I believe it is the nature of this industry that has caused this trend, and if we are to stop the harmful effects of this model of beauty, both on models, and wider society, we have to look at the nature of the industry itself. In this short blog I will aim to examine how the industry affects these body type trends, and what these can and do have on society, especially young girls.
Anyone who knows advertisers, knows that manipulation is part and parcel of the industry. Products are targeted at specific demographics, and then advertisers put their product in an environment which they believe will appeal to that demographic. For most women in western society, being beautiful and slim is a fantasy. Some people actively pursue it, some don't. To want to be thought of as desirable is a universal truth of living . People who are then hired to sell clothes, are they the genesis or the consequence of this desire? Is it logical, in a way, that models are extremely slim and beautiful? Is it critically important to the industry for them to be this way?
Fashion seems to run on exclusivity. Being blessed with the right genetics to model is exclusive. Having the time, money and knowledge to spend on upkeep of a look, sometimes unhealthily, sometimes not, is exclusive. Models need to have particular knowledge to survive in the industry as a paid professional. Scarily, most models are under 16., at least when they start. This is part of where the problem lies in the modelling industry. With a sample size of zero (the size designers make their clothes that are to be worn on the catwalk, fashion shoots and advertisements), women most likely to fit this size are in fact, girls.
'Size zero' is said to be chest-waist-hips 76-56-81 cm to 84-64-89 cm. So, why this small? Current Chanel Head Designer Karl Lagerfeld controversially said this year that skinny models just look better, and overweight women are just "jealous" of them. This seems to be a belief (at least the first part) echoed throughout the industry. Kelly Cutrone, owner of People's Revolution, a company that produces fashion shows around the world, has stated "Clothes look better on thin people. The fabric hangs better." Another interesting quote from the same article is from Stephanie Schur, a designer, who says about runway models "They are all pretty girls, but no one really stands out. For runway it's about highlighting the clothes. It's finding the girls that make your clothes look best."
What I have interpreted from this, is that models can be viewed as just pawns by the industry in the game of what is considered desirable by designers and wider society. Models have been known as everything from clothes-hangers to muses, but currently it seems they are being pushed and prodded by the fashion industry to be a certain way. To be part of 'the dream' as part of a designers desire to sell clothes would be ok, were they not real human beings that have real potential health and body image issues, as all human beings do. They cannot be treated as commodities, just a means to an end to push product. Clothes may 'look better' to designers on skinny models, but is it the safest thing to actually enforce?
It should always be kept in mind with this issue that wider society is being affected by this, in negative ways that they have not necessarily consciously chosen, as well. Young girls growing up in a society where thinness is considered desirable are encountering many body image issues. A survey of 1,000 American girls aged between 13 and 17 in February of this year revealed "almost nine in 10 American teenage girls say they feel pressured by the fashion and media industries to be skinny and that an unrealistic, unattainable image of beauty has been created."
This survey provided some eye-openers. One in three girls said they have starved themselves or refused to eat in an effort to lose weight, while almost half said they knew someone their age who has forced themselves to throw up after eating. More than a third said they know someone who has been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Something needs to be done, and the evidence is that the fashion industry plays a part in this. Body-image researcher Sarah Murnen, professor of psychology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio says "The promotion of the thin, sexy ideal in our culture has created a situation where the majority of girls and women don't like their bodies. And body dissatisfaction can lead girls to participate in very unhealthy behaviors to try to control weight", in an article asking if models warp girls' body image.
I do honestly believe that a healthy person is light years better-looking in clothes to see, then someone who is quite obviously out-of-proportion and underweight. However, we do not want to start a witch-hunt. A healthy slim girl is one thing-and what seems to be a current favourite game of some media and members of society, is to assume all models have some form of eating disorder, which I believe is a form of discrimination in itself-someone who is unhealthily or even dangerously using methods to maintain a certain weight is another. Yes, some girls are naturally skinny. As girls grow older, these are a minority. Some actresses and models in the public eye are actually naturally slim, and blaming them completely for the problems of body image in young girls is not going to help. No matter what the size, the focus should be on health.
Kate Moss is one model, much, much more so than any other, who is blamed for kick-starting the so-called 'heroin-chic' look in the nineties, and the trend for thinness in models since then. In an interview from a few years back, she talks about initial rejections in the industry, being blamed for young girls starving themselves, and actually eating. I think we can tell that that this woman is naturally skinny by the fact that she has stayed slim the whole time she has been in the public eye. One woman, a hard-working one nonetheless, cannot be blamed for being in the right place at the right time, and if she caught designers' attention and continues to do so. Blaming one model for thinness being desirable in society is ludicrous.
My two-cents, from what I know and have learnt recently, what I think a stepping-stone to improvement can be, is lots more transparency in the industry. The sheer work that goes into even supermodels to make them look photo-ready; professional make-up artists and hairdressers, stylists, the dieting and looking after their skin models undertake, is not extremely well-known, and if it is well-known, than it is not talked widely enough about. Never mind the use of airbrushing in almost every fashion shoot or advertisement known to man. These images we see are reality for no-one. Us consumers seem to still want this fantasy, and we have to be brave enough to stand up and give it up.
An interesting development in this issue I found out recently, is prominent German women's magazine Brigitte banning models from its pages in favour of "real women". This is an intriguing idea, even if I do find the term "real women" offensive (are models not people too?). Interestingly, they say "We will show women who have an identity – the 18-year-old student, the head of the board, the musician, the football player,", a belief that models are viewed as commodities, anonymous in their selling of clothes, but also maybe unattainable versions of beauty?.
Is this the avenue to go down to combat unhealthy body image issues in young girls? What affect will it have on the fashion and modelling industries if more magazines follow suit?
It will be interesting to see in coming years.
