It seems that the death of a few anorexic models are finally making the fashion world sit up and take notice. Rather, they are forced to take notice when such countries as Spain are going to be implementing laws to ensure that models have a BMI of at least 18; Italy will be soon to follow with their own rules. Have we grown so immune to sickly thin models that we don’t even notice until someone dies from the deadly disease?
Unfortunately, in fashion and the beauty industry, the thinner the better. This isn’t only seen throughout the pages of any fashion magazine, but it has also transferred over into how sizes are now being made for clothing. Banana Republic has size 00 and Nicole Miller will soon have size “subzero.”
We can’t seem to make up our minds. We have an outcry over the epidemic of childhood obesity and urge kids to lose weight and get healthy, we exploit deadly thin models throughout the fashion industry enforcing the view that thinner is better, we now have fashion designers creating negative sizes further reinforcing that skinny is beautiful and then we suddenly try to put all of that on hold announcing that maybe we were wrong about the whole thing. As an adult, it doesn’t affect me as much, as my sense of self is pretty secure with how I look. The people this harms most are teenagers who crumble under pressure, especially peer pressure, and the pressure to be thin is enormous.
Page Six reported that Anna Wintour is spearheading the effort to get polices into place here because, “We would much rather come up with a way of self-policing ourselves than have regulations rammed down our throats." This statement is interesting to me, as I sense no sincere interest in the health of the models. What I do hear is someone who doesn’t want to have someone else’s rules and ideas of thin “rammed down” her throat. I could be wrong and I hope I am. However, Diane von Furstenberg is also joining the fight, as noted in Women's Wear Daily, and her feeling is quite different stating, "As designers, we cannot ignore the impact fashion has on body image. We share a responsibility to protect women, and very young girls in particular, within the industry, sending the message that health is beauty."
I agree with Spain and their minimum BMI for models being 18, since 18.5-24.9 is considered normal. Why not have models gracing the cover of Vogue looking more like the average American woman, than having teenagers striving to be something that could kill them?