The ideals of beauty and physical appearance depicted through the fashion industry has a major influence on body image, especially among women, who have been found to drastically alter their eating habits, often developing eating disorders, in order to attain a model like figure. According to Heinberg and Thompson, content analysis has revealed that women are commonly shown as being abnormally thin by the fashion and media, while men are portrayed of being of normal weight . An extensive study conducted by Silverstein et al. in 1986 that, among 33 TV shows studied, 69% showed female characters that were coded ‘thin’, while a mere 18% of men fell in the same category. It was also noted that models that were featured in prominent magazines such as Vogue had become increasingly thinner 1930 onwards .
It has been known that photography makes a model appear 10% wider than her actual width, whether the advertisement is in print or in the form of a video. Hence, a woman who weighs 100 pounds in reality will appear to weigh 110 pounds in a photograph. As such, models whose body weight was within the normal range would appear to be heavier. Thinner women look more presentable as their clothes drape better, with fewer creases, hanging nearer to vertical, making them look more like the two dimensional drawings that make up the design of the clothes. For this purpose, fashion photographers began using thin models so that they would appear to be of average weight in the photographs. However, this action taken for convenience and practicality, soon morphed into a trend where the slender frame of a woman became the ideal of feminine beauty. Today, instead of being the required 10% thinner than the average healthy weight, models are actually 23% thinner. On an average, only about 7% of American women between the ages of either to thirty four years can attain the slender body displayed on fashion ramps, while the models themselves are thinner than over 93% same aged women .
At the beginning of 20th century, being slim was considered to be most fashionable, with the ideal weight for a woman standing 5 feet 4 inches tall to be about 10 stones. However, this body image had not trickled into families and it was only expected of models to follow this ideal. Post the Second World War, women idealism saw a great shift as life styles changed to accommodate the renewed expectations from the feminine kind. Women were not longer expected to solely be homemakers but were increasingly required to undertake work and professions to meet growing financial challenges. This brought women into the public eye like never before and soon, overweight women began being considered as being inefficient. By the 1950s, have a slim yet busty figure was considered to be most desirable. The trend has morphed over the years and today, being ultra-thin is believed by many to be fashionable.
Garner et al found that, post 1959, the ideal standard for a beautiful female body has consistently become thinner . The societal pressure on young women to adhere and match up to this ideal has been increasing in accordance . This has led to a growing number of women trying to attain body sizes and weights that are too low to be considered healthy . During the 1960s and 1970s, beings overly tanned became trendy as this revealed that a person was capable of travelling to exotic locations with sunnier climates. However, as the dangers of sun-exposure and UV radiation emerged, this trend gradually subsided. In the United States, a woman having blue eyes, blond hair and a busty figure is still considered to be the most beautiful. By the 1980s, the ultra-thin concept of feminine beauty had gained a firm hold in popular culture. It was about this time that its began to be generally agreed that socio-cultural influences and the impact of mass media were driving women to develop eating disorders in an effort to become overly thin .
Mazur noted that the physical appearance and beauty of women had become an influencing factor of their social success, leading to additional pressure on women to attain a thin body size . The study’s findings also revealed that, throughout the 1980s, women’s and men’s magazines carried advertisements that were focused on a thin and slender body size and shape and were contributing to the pressure on women to achieve and maintain these standards. Mazur states that the standards of an ideal feminine body has been changing constantly every year and this further adds to the pressure on the body image of women as they have to keep up with ever changing trends and societal expectations. Nielson reveals that, today, the average woman in America stands 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighs about 144 lbs and fits into a size 14 clothes, while the models depicted in fashion magazines are, on an average, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weigh about 110 lbs and wear size 2 clothes .
As stated by Dr. Aric Sigmun, wafer like figures of ramp models that nearly reveal the entire skeletal structure beneath the skin is, far from being beautiful, a sign of mal-nourishment, starvation and eating disorders . In the 21st century, it has become common for advertisements, motion pictures, television shows and magazines to use models that are overly thin and hence women are constantly exposed to such media conveying the message that a thin figure is a good figure. Over the last decades, cases of young girls being admitted to hospitals as a result of anorexia nervosa have increased by as much as 80%. With every year, the age of the girls that are developing eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, is steadily decreasing, with girls as young as 8 years of age being obsessed with being thin and taking extreme and unhealthy measures in order to attain a skeletal figure. Dr. Sigmun cited a study published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology that reported that the survey revealed that girls between the ages three to eight years indicated that they were anxious that they would become or would be considered ‘fat’ .
Bawdon notes that it was the sudden death on the fashion ramp of two Hispanic models due to acute eating disorders, that led to an intensive enquiry into the fitness, health and well being of models. Stating a study by Maroness Kingsmill, published by the Model Health Inquiry, Bawdon notes that it was established that fashion models are greatly vulnerable to developing eating disorders and were found to be at a consistent high risk of suffering from such ailments . There have been several such cases where models, in an attempt to attain the inhuman body shapes considered to be ideal standards in the fashion industry, have gone to dangerous extents to become as thin as possible without dying. However, in many cases, the models have succumbed to malnutrition and died. In the year 2006, Luisel Ramos, a popular model from Uruguay died at the age of 22 from heart failure after starving herself for months in order to maintain a ‘thin’ figure. Three months after Ramos’ death, another model, 21 year old Brazilian Ana Carolina Reston succumbed to complications arising from prolonged and severe anorexia .
Bawdon gives a harrowing account of statements made by fashion insiders during the inquiry with one editor who regularly attends fashion show stating that she was never able to pay attention to the clothes being displayed as she could not overcome the shock on seeing the ‘emaciated’ bodies of the models. In another account, a fashion journalist reported to the inquiry that the fashion world was in a constant numb state where the health and well being of the models were concerned as it was common to consider models nothing more than human hangers for clothes and not human beings. After the inquiry had been concluded, a total of 14 recommendations had been devised that were aimed at improving the physical and mental health of fashion models. Recommendations included: a) the restriction of models under the age of 16 years from walking on the ramp, and b) the formation of a trade union that would ensure compulsory medical examinations were being performed and recorded on a regular basis .
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