Death a la mode

Snejana Onopka

With the local paper, Nice Matin, one gets a magazine - Femina. I was appalled to see that their main fashion article had photos of very skinny models - despite recent reports such as this:

Model's Death from Anorexia Spurs Warnings

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 17, 2006 By Stephen M. Silverman Ana Carolina

The death Tuesday of anorexic model Ana Carolina Reston has those close to her hoping the fashion industry will finally wake up to the dangers of the eating disorder.

Reston, 21, a Brazilian model who weighed only 88 pounds at the time of her death, succumbed to a generalized infection caused by anorexia nervosa, officials at Sao Paulo's Servior Publico Hospital said.

Reston's mother, Miriam, told the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper she'd pleaded with her 5-ft., 8-in. daughter to eat more, the Associated Press reports. "She would say: 'Mom, please don't fight with me. There is nothing wrong with me, I'm fine.' "

Also speaking out is the mother of Reston's model boyfriend, Bruno Setti, 19. "Ana's death should serve as a wake-up call to modeling agencies about the danger of anorexia," Setti's mother Viviane said, according to the London Times. "There's nothing glamorous about an ending like hers."

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,26334,1560633,00.html

It's true that in general French women aren't fat (cf: "French women don't get fat" -
http://www.mireilleguiliano.com ) and many are very elegant (like Montserrat). But I have noticed that many women on French TV are tending more towards skinny than slim.

But then some French men are macho idiots, like the head of the French couture federation:

'The shape and size of fashion models cannot be regulated, the head of the French couture federation has said, after models deemed too skinny were reportedly banned from the catwalk in Spain [and were banned in Milan - so he's just wrong].

Didier Grumbach, president of the couture federation and chamber of haute couture, told AFP ... that "everyone would laugh" if France attempted to follow suit." '

What a pathetically stupid comment, used against so many sensible changes in the past.


'Excessively-thin models have been barred from a major Madrid fashion show later this month for fear they could send the wrong message to young Spanish girls, local media reported last week.

Madrid's regional government, which is co-financing the Pasarela Cibeles, has vetoed around a third of the models who took part in last year's show because they weigh too little.

"That worries me," Grumbach commented: "We are not going to regulate in tastes and colours." '

As if it were a mere question of taste and not the health and possible death of young women.

' "If Jean Paul Gaultier wants to take fat people for his catwalk shows, we are not going to stop him.'

Obviously this is not the general trend.

"When (John) Galliano puts on the catwalk people who are not pretty pretty, no one thinks to reproach him," he added.

"It's for the designer to decide what type of model he needs... that cannot be regulated," Grumbach added.'

Of course it can, idiot, and the Italians have done it.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/15/060915111446.lxkagac8.html

From a fashion insider:

"Dawn,
I am well aware that many people have very fast metabolisms and are unable to keep on weight, but I worked behind the scenes in the fashion industry for ten years, and sadly the "high metabolism" model is the exception not the rule. Most models maintain their thinness through drugs, exercise, cigarettes, and extreme dieting. Putting on a few pounds with medical help, if necessary, may allow the competition to be more fierce, but I know of MANY unpublicised deaths that have been swept under the rug. Eating disorders are not something that anyone generally broadcasts. And while I wouldn't say that the fashion industry is the only industry that perpetuates an unhealthy body ideal; but any industry who is glamorizing a certain image has to take a certain amount of responsibility for its message."

http://www.fashionologie.com/fashionologie/2006/12/a_license_to_mo.html