Making The Fashion Industry a Scapegoat for Eating Disorders

Spain’s top fashion show turned away numerous models whose weights in relation to their heights were too low. Modeling agencies are outraged and the specter of weight restrictions at other fashion venues appears to be materializing.

In their implementation of the world’s very first ban on underweight fashion models, the Association of Fashion Designers of Spain used a mathematical formula to calculate the women’s body mass indexes (BMI). Almost one-third of the models failed to meet the minimum BMI requirement of 18 to appear in the September 18 to 22 show.

The organizers of Pasarela Cibeles, also called Madrid Fashion Week, say they want models at the show to project “an image of beauty and health,” and to shun the waif-like look that some call “heroin chic.”

The decision was made as part of a voluntary agreement with the Madrid regional government, which says that the fashion industry has a responsibility to portray healthy body images. They say that the new rules were imposed to protect the models as well as young women who may cultivate unhealthy eating habits in their efforts to emulate their favorite stars.

“Fashion is a mirror and many teenagers imitate what they see on the catwalk,” said regional official Concha Guerra.

The Association of Fashion Designers of Spain say they support the body mass regulations, and that the quality of the collections is their priority, not the sizes of the women who model them.

Eating disorder activists say they have doubts about whether the new rules will be followed as many Spanish designers and modeling agencies oppose the weight restrictions.

“If they don’t go along with it the next step is to seek legislation, just like with tobacco,” said Carmen Gonzalez of Spain’s Association in Defense of Attention for Anorexia and Bulimia, an organization that has campaigned for such regulations for over a decade.

Trendsetting

The underweight model ban appears to be a budding trend and Milan, Italy’s fashion capital, fears that it could be next.

Milan’s mayor, Letizia Moratti, told an Italian newspaper that she would seek a similar ban on “sick” looking, underweight models in Milan’s Fashion Week, which begins on September 23.

Mario Boselli, head of the Italian fashion industry’s chamber of commerce, said anorexia was a “rare phenomenon” in the fashion business.

“You don’t solve these problems with new rules. We have to use common sense and work with everyone in the industry — including the models — to spread awareness and deal with the problem,” Mr. Boselli said.

Riccardo Gay, head of the modeling agency of the same name that used to represent British supermodel Naomi Campbell in Milan said, “With those kind of rules, we’d have to turn away 80 percent of models. Naomi Campbell wouldn’t be able to walk down the catwalk, she’d be too thin.”

Mr. Gay also said that Madrid has exaggerated the issue. “Some designers have used extremely thin models, but we haven’t. We tell models to exercise, eat well, go to bed early — sensible rules,” he added.

Ryan Brown, North America director of marketing and public relations for New York’s Elite modeling agency said, “It is very unprecedented,” and he welcomed the decision, saying, “I think it is great to promote health.”

However, Cathy Gould, North America director of the Elite modeling agency, says that the fashion industry is being used as a scapegoat for illnesses like anorexia and bulimia.

“I think its outrageous, I understand they want to set this tone of healthy beautiful women, but what about discrimination against the model and what about the freedom of the designer,” Ms. Gould said, adding that the ban could harm the careers of naturally “gazelle-like” models.

Ambivalent Obsessions

Here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we cannot seem to make up our minds about our weights — one week its an epidemic of obesity and the next its anorexia and bulimia (with many other epidemics coming soon to a fear mongering capitalist media outlet near you) — and who or what is responsible when they’re too high or too low.

It is tempting to avoid personal responsibility when there are so many scapegoats out there; from very effective marketing campaigns of companies that produce unhealthy, fattening foods to thin and popular actresses and models on television and in movies and magazines.

On the other hand, it seems rather cruel to simply dismiss all of these weighty issues as matters of willpower and self-control when vanity and covetousness are integral parts of our human nature and we are conditioned to believe that we can, and should be possessed of the desire to, “have it all,” by an economy that must be driven by greed in order to prosper.

However, that caveat does not signal a ringing endorsement of the sort of social engineering that is now being imposed upon the fashion industry, which has as much right to participate in the free market as any other businesses whose fortunes rise and fall at the whims of their customers, not their marketing departments.

All of us are bombarded with the mixed messages of the media that sells fattening foods while promoting thinness as a fashionable ideal, and all of us deserve to have our rights protected and defended against the unscrupulous purveyors in the midst of that superficial barrage. But there’s nothing dishonest about selling food for its taste rather than its nutritional value, and using thin models to sell clothes is not misleading.

Indeed, some of us are naturally more susceptible than others to that fusillade of images and temptations, but the imposition of tyranny for the sake of such individuals denies the right to free will to those of us who are simply more resistant to marketing propaganda.