Fashion, Media, Models and Us

Introduction

Everywhere you look there are stunning women staring back at you from the glossy pages of magazines, peering down from billboards above the bustling streets. Their bodies are perfectly toned and oh so thin, their faces without a flaw, modelling the latest fashions and trends. The mannequins in the window make that bodycon dress look amazing. Do you ever wonder if these women are actually healthy? If that face you see is really the face that was in the original image? If any normal woman off the street can look as good as that mannequin in the figure-hugging dress?

I would like to find the answers to some questions that have been burning in my mind;

 How has the ideal woman’s body changed over time?

 Is fashion on the runway and on the rack affecting how we feel about ourselves, and is it healthy?

 Is fashion changing our views from a young age through toys?

The Ideal Body: Then and Now

In the 1950’s and early 1960’s, Marilyn Monroe was in her prime, flooding the fashion and media with images of her world famous figure. Although she is still known as one of the sexiest woman to have lived, very few of today’s women aspire to look like her. Elizabeth Hurley once said to Allure magazine “I’ve always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I’d kill myself if I was that fat”. Monroe stood at 165cm tall with a weight of 61.23kg, giving her a completely normal and healthy BMI (body mass index) of 22.5. Monroe was a ‘sex bomb’ and the ideal woman of the time. Playboy magazine has even said she is “the juiciest morsel to come out of the California hills since the discovery of the navel orange”.

However, Monroe was one of the more curvaceous models of her era. The models and ‘fashionistas’ of the 1950’s still had a lower than average body mass compared to the everyday women (approximately 8% less on average). Highly recognised actress and trend setter Audrey Hepburn was one of these women. At 170.18cm tall and weighing in at 49.89kg, Hepburn was underweight with a BMI of 17.2. Even though there were a small number of underweight models etc. in the fashion and media in the 50’s and 60’s, in just a generation, the image of the ideal women’s body has changed dramatically. Supermodels are considered by many as the definition of beauty. The fashion and media industries constantly project images of these idealised women into the general population. Some of these images are highly unfair representations of what a healthy and beautiful woman is. For example, it has been reported at http://www.raderprograms.com that well known supermodels such as Niki Taylor and Elle Macpherson have BMI’s that meet the physical criterion for anorexia. There have been cases of models dying from their desire to be thin for the cameras. On the 2nd of August 2006, Luisel Ramos (a Uruguayan model) fainted after being on the runway at Fashion Week in Uruguay. Ramos’ cause of death was heart failure that was the result of her eating disorder; anorexia nervosa. It is said that in the months leading up to her death, Ramos survived on just diet coke and lettuce.

It seems that this revolution in the fashion and media for skeletal beauty stemmed from English model, Twiggy Lawson. Lawson took centre stage across the globe in the 60’s and was one of the first internationally recognised supermodels. Lawson was 169cm and weighed 41kg; a BMI of 14.35. A BMI this low is considered severely underweight; a BMI of 16 is considered to be starving. Lawson received a lot of criticism for her wraith-like figure; one of the harshest comments came from the president of Leeds Women’s shop, Mark Cohen, who said “her legs remind me of two painted worms” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy).

Although Lawson had an incredibly low BMI, sources have said that she ate like a horse but never seemed to gain weight. Lawson was called Twig in the playground as a child as she was just naturally so lean. In recent years, Lawson has spoken out against models that are keeping themselves at dangerously low weights, saying “I was very skinny, but that was just my natural build. I always ate sensibly – being thin was just in my genes”.

What is Fashion Doing to Us?

Today when you look in store windows there are rake-thin mannequins modelling the clothing. Sandra Criado Mosteles, a 29 year old window dresser for clothing stores from Madrid has said that when she dresses the mannequins, the smallest sizes of clothing must still be taken in with pins to get them to fit. Some years back, around the 1950’s, mannequins represented the real sizing of the average woman. They were not made as an unfair representation of the normal woman’s body. Clothing is no longer made for natural curves; it is made for the woman of no shape. A mother from South America, when interviewed for an article on http://womensenews.org said that she seldom wanted to go shopping for pants as she found it so difficult to find a pair that fit well around her curvy hips. She said that "If they don't fit you well, then you become nervous that you are fat... you go home and want to start a diet.” Many women today have this same issue, but not only with pants. This issue occurs with every type of clothing you could imagine.

From shop to shop the sizing may vary extremely. In fashion today there is a new form of sizing called ‘vanity sizes’. These sizes are incorrect and are made to make the consumer feel better about themselves. A woman may truly be a size 12, but her vanity sized clothing may be a size 8 to 10. This is not healthy and can be highly misleading. According to http://wikipoedia.org, vanity sizing tends to be more prominent in cheaper branded women’s clothing in countries that do not have standardised clothing sizes, such as the Unite States of America. Some argue with the existence of vanity sizing, and have come to the conclusion that vanity sizing “merely reflects the increasing prevalence of obesity” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_sizing) Things seem to be looking up though, as a few years ago Spain’s government had a re-think if how the fashion industry has their sizes. The bodies of over 10,000 women from 10 different age groups across the country were measured with advanced laser technologies to determine exact measurements of the everyday Spanish women. Clothing in Spain has now undergone the change of having all clothing sizes so they are the same in almost every store. 90% of fashion retailers agreed to the change, including well known international stores such as Zara. The agreement also required all parties involved to swap out their noticeably thin mannequins to ones that were a minimum size of a US-8. Spain’s revolution could eventually mark a change that the rest of the world may follow.

Fashion shows around the world parade the latest styles on women that are mere frames with nothing to them; clothes hangers so to speak. Many of the models are severely underweight. In 2009 internationally known model, Kate Moss, triggered a spark that created a fire when she said “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-21/trends/31313642_1_luisel-ramos- skinny-models-indian-fashion). The affairs within Madrid’s Fashion Week began to change after this hideous display of words.

In September of 2006, Madrid’s Fashion Week announced that all models with a BMI of less than 18 would be banned from the shows. Doctors measured all the models that were to be taking part in the show to ensure that there were no models in breach of the new rule. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ reported that this resulted in 3 models being banned from that year’s show by the organisers as they had BMIs less than 16. Dailymail.co.uk also reports that the show banned the models for the fact that “they set an unhealthy example for teenage girls”. This is a brave move that the officials of Madrid’s Fashion Week took as not all in the fashion industry have the desire to follow their lead. Organisers of London Fashion Week 2007 said that they would not be enforcing the banning of underweight models from their shows as they believe “that regulation is neither desirable nor enforceable” (http://fashion.lilithezine.com/Fashion-Models-Sizes.html). The fashion designers were, however, encouraged to use “healthy” models in their shows and were only allowed to use models of 16 years and over.

Children and Fashion “Barbie you're beautiful You make me feel My Barbie doll is really real Barbie's small and so petite, Her clothes and figure look so neat Her dancing outfits ring some bells At parties she will cast a spell Purses, hats, and gloves galore And all the gadgets gals adore. Someday, I'm going to be exactly like you ‘Till then I know just what I'll do... Barbie, beautiful Barbie I'll make believe that I am you” These are the above lyrics are those to the song that played in the background of the first ever Barbie doll commercial, that advertised the world’s first Barbie doll in 1959. Barbie dolls are the most sold doll in the world, it is estimated that there have been more than a billion of them sold across 150 countries world-wide. Manufacturer, Mattel, claim that there are 3 Barbie dolls sold off of the shelves every second (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie). Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, she is from Willows, Wisconsin, and she celebrated her 50th birthday in 2009. With Barbie being such a popular character around the world, it would be nice if she was a good influence and role model for the younger generations that dress her up in their play time, yes? Many own, or have owned Barbie dolls and are lead to believe that Barbie is the image of female perfection. So many young girls are lead into believing such a distorted image. Researchers have found that if Barbie was put into human dimensions, she would have ceased to menstruate due to her incredibly low body fat percentage, her spine would be too weak to support the weight of her upper body, and her abdomen would be far too small to contain any more than a few centimetres of bowel and half a liver. A real woman built like this would die of malnutrition due to chronic diarrhoea she would suffer and she would also have to walk on all fours as her proportions wouldn’t allow for her to walk upright. A lot of people believe that young girls do not understand the idealised image of Barbie, but there are some that believe that exposing such young girls to such things aids in creating insecurities about themselves earlier in life. Although Barbie’s body image may be causing issues, there is the other side of the story. Barbie has been featured with more than 108 careers, from Spanish Teacher, to Astronaut, to Pet Groomer Barbie and more. This shows young girls that they can be whatever they want to be in life; giving them confidence for the future which is necessary in a world where the workplace is still highly male dominated. Dressing Barbie and playing her roles during playtime gets girls inspired for the future, and although they are young, they start to get ideas of what they would like to do later in life. In this aspect, Barbie is one of the best influences a young girl could have. In conclusion, I believe that fashion, media, models and us needs to change. We should stop being drawn into believing that skinny is the perfect image of a woman’s body. We come in all different shapes and sizes and shouldn’t be pressured to change; no matter what the so called standards are. Fashion on the runway and in the stores should not affect how we feel about ourselves, but it does. Media is portraying an unhealthy image for us all; including young girls. Although toys such as Barbie represent females being able to do anything; she also plants the idea that you can only do anything you want to it you meet the standards of beauty in the media. Society as a whole is lead into believing we have to be a certain way, the “ideal” woman’s body has changed so much throughout time that it is hard to keep track of what we are expected to look like. Things need to change, we all need to stop unhealthily indulging in the images shot at us through the media, we need to stop feeling bad about ourselves, and parents need to make sure that their daughters understand that their toys are just toys; not something to look up to in a body image sense. Change needs to happen before fashion, media, models and us get to the point of no return.

Title Author Date Publisher Media Unknown 3/5/2012 http://www.raderprograms.com/causes- Influence statistics/media-eating-disorders.html Beauty vs. bb-rocks 14/5/2012 http://www.teenink.com/opinion/pop_culture_tre the Beast nds/article/260925/Beauty-vs-the-Beast/ What Unknown 22/5/2012 http://www.casapalmera.com/articles/media Causes %E2%80%99s-influence-on-eating-disorders/ Eating Disorders? Spain: Tracey 12/02/201 http://www.salon.com/2008/02/12/spain/ Goodbye Clark-Flory 2 stick-figure sizing Anorexic Unknown 17/11/200 http://fashion.lilithezine.com/Fashion-Models- Model of 6 Sizes.html Brazil Dies Skinny- Jill Lawless 25/01/200 http://fashion.lilithezine.com/Fashion-Models- Model Ban 7 Sizes.html not desirable: U.K. Fashion Spain Sizes Brenda 21/02/200 http://womensenews.org/story/arts/080221/spain- Up Fashion Gazzar 8 sizes-fashion-worlds-measuring-stick World’s Measuring Stick Three Unknown 12/02/200 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- models 8 513593/Three-models-banned-Madrid-fashion- banned week-skinny.html from Madrid fashion week for being 'too skinny'

Fashion Juliette 24/09/200 http://womensenews.org/story/arts/060924/fashio World Says Terzieff 6 n-world-says-too-thin-too-hazardous Thin Is Too Hazardous How Jim Foster 15/05/201 http://www.diet- Female 2 blog.com/07/female_body_shape_in_the_20th_ce Body Shape ntury.php Changed in the 20th Century Twiggy abagond 23/01/200 http://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/twiggy 8 / Eating Unknown 01/06/201 http://www.believeinyou.biz/eating Disorders 2 %20disorders.htm 11 Facts Unknown 13/06/201 http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11- About Body 2 facts-about-body-image Image Twiggy Multiple 20/06/201 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy Authors 2 The Thin Erica Cox 20/06/101 http://www.loti.com/sixties_fashion/The_thin_craz Craze of 2 e_of_the_1960s.htm the 1960’s Ultra Thin Simi 21/04/201 http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012- is not in Kuriakose 2 04-21/trends/31313642_1_luisel-ramos-skinny- models-indian-fashion The History Mary 21/06/201 http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventions/a/ of Barbie Bellis 2 The-History-Of-Barbie-Dolls.htm Dolls How Does Kayla Rose 03/12/201 http://voices.yahoo.com/how-does-barbie-affect- Barbie 2 our-childrens-body-image-7256394.html Affect Our Childrens Body Image? Life-size Neil Katz 21/06/201 http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162- Barbie’s 2 20055694-10391704.html Shocking dimensions (PHOTO): Would she be anorexic? Barbie Multiple 23/07/201 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie Authors 2 Barbie’s Unknown 23/07/201 http://www.beliefnet.com/Love- Many 2 Family/2009/03/Barbie-Careers.aspx Callings If I was to write this report again, I would take more time to find different sources, such as books, instead of relying so heavily upon the internet. I would also take more care to ensure that my sources contained reliable information that I can trust. Lastly, if I was to re-do this report I would not rush it to the extent I did.