For a few decades now, the image of beauty has changed a lot. Before, having some shape and a generous chest was a criteria of beauty. Now, models are getting thinner and taller. Having a skeletal body is the new tendency as we notice during fashion shows. In order to be that skinny, models cannot be healthy and many of them are dealing with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is an eating disorder that mostly impacts young females from 15 to 24 years old. About 14 million Americans are affected by this disease. People suffering this disease have an obsession with food and a false perception of their bodies. A person is anorexic if they are at least 15% underweight and ignore medical opinion telling them to gain weight. Women in general want to be skinnier because someone skinny is better looking, according to most women. The pressure to be thin is constantly present. In the fashion industry, this pressure is a lot more important and drives young women to lose weight, developing anorexia. I believe that designers have a responsibility in this situation. I wanted to answer the question: How can we hold the fashion industry responsible for the development of anorexia in models? In order to transform our image of beauty and the standard body, we need to hear more testimony about models and we need to better regulate the fashion industry.

This paper might not be pleasant for you to read because you are probably not a doctor or someone related to any medical sector. If you are a man you probably think that this topic is boring, and you might even hate fashion because you think that only women are obsessed with fashion and clothes. This may be true, but one day you will have a wife and she might deal with some weight problems. For the ones that read newspapers or have heard about this problem, and think that this whole anorexia and fashion industry story is just something invented by people to find an explanation of underweight models, I will show stories that happened to former models. If you have some relatives or friends that work in fashion as designers or have other functions, you may not believe what the media say about anorexia in the fashion industry. It will be impossible for you to imagine that someone you care about can put someone’s life at risks just for a fashion show. I would totally agree with you. However, I am going to present facts that show that the fashion industry is not totally innocent in this problem. 

The medical name of anorexia is anorexia nervosa. It is an eating disorder related to an obsession with food and exercise. The person will stop eating healthy and will put food restrictions in order to lose weight. Extreme exercising can also be seen as anorexia, because it will result in a loss of weight. Anorexia can eventually lead to someone’s death. There is not only one way to become anorexic, many factors can lead to that disease. If your family already had some issues with eating disorders, you are more likely to be affected too, about 80 to 50% chance to be affected (Ros-Lehtinen). The other factors are related with mental disorders. Having a low self-esteem, being under a lot of pressure to be thin, being scared to be fat, experiencing depression, or being too perfectionist with your body, all these factors can lead to anorexia (Scholten). The problem is once you have this disease there is no return. It is a mental disease, so there is no effective treatment to heal. Nutritional consultation and therapy are the only recommended treatments that will eventually heal you, but you will have after-effects for your entire life. Someone that is anorexic will lose a lot of weight, be obsessed with the calories and fat in food, be scared to gain pounds, see themselves fatter that they are in the mirror, tend to exercise too much, feel cold especially hands and feet, experience hair loss or on the contrary hair growth depending on people, and heart palpitations (Scholten). This does not sound fun.

For people living outside America, anorexia in the fashion industry could sound ironic. The average American model weights 23% less than the average American woman, whereas only a generation ago, the difference was 8% (Willis 22). In the book The Culture of Beauty, one author argues “The beauty myth is not about women at all, it is about men and power” (Willis 33). Women are constantly judged by each other, which makes them unable to see the problem that really faces them, the problem of power. This power makes them judge each other and themselves and it is a never-ending circle. Since they are under a lot of pressure to be good looking, the image that women have of their bodies will be distorted (Garner). For example, when Kate Moss said “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, she exposed an opposing point of view of thinness. By saying that, she confuses people because doctors are fighting against anorexia and lecturing young people about how dangerous anorexia is. She is clearly rejecting the medical opinion about anorexia and claims that anorexia is acceptable (Shelby).

Television is the main inspiration for adolescents. They identify themselves with actress and actresses in TV shows. Unfortunately, this representation of the perfect body is totally wrong. In real life, you have no chance to find that many skinny people around you. In all TV shows, they are all really thin and seem healthy, but as a doctor would say too skinny is not healthy (Ros-Lehtinen). These false representations will have a huge impact on adolescents. They will want to be like their idol, and nobody will blame them for that because it is normal. The problem is nobody educates them on why models are that thin, so they find out by themselves, and repeat the mistake. They are not prepared to face what is coming and they are not aware of the consequences that comes with eating disorders.

A former French model, Victoire Dauxerre testified to her abuse at the hands of the fashion industry and explained her tragic story. At first, she was a healthy student about to graduate high school. She wanted to study political science in college, but she did not get it. She was shopping with her mom and a designer noticed her and invited her to a meeting at the industry’s office, offering her an opportunity to shine again. They started to take all the measurements and ended up telling her that her hips were 3cm too large. At this moment she was 18 years old, her height was 1m78 and weighted 58kg. She was a size 36 and the clothes for the fashion shows were size 32. In order to fit into the clothes, she had to lose 11kg in only two months. She suddenly stopped eating. Instead of the three meals per day you are supposed to have she had only 3 apples a day in her stomach. Victoire confessed in an interview for “Le Magazine de la Santé” that nobody used the expression “you have to lose weight or be skinnier”. Designers just told her that she had to fit in the clothes. The vocabulary employed does not make them guilty for anything in the law’s eyes, but the effect on the models is the same. Victoire Dauxerre thought that this was only temporary and when she reached the wanted measurements she would start to eat normally again even if the quantities might be smaller. The plan was obviously not respected because it was too late, she already had anorexia (Allo Docteurs). 

Her family started to worry about her and in front of them she faked eating, because right after she ate she took laxatives to not gain weight. She never admitted she was anorexic when she was a model, and one of the symptoms that she first felt was the constant coldness. Then appeared stomach pain and hair growth. Once she passed out in the street when her agent was with her. He immediately went to a store to buy a little piece of chicken. He knew what was happening to her, because when someone passes out, chicken is not the first thing that comes to your mind. He decided to ignore it and just keep going like nothing happened. 

After each show, for the picture shooting she could gain a little weight, and it is at this moment that she realized what was happening to her. When she started to eat again, her brain started to work again and she understood how bad she was treated. The former French model denounced that she was just an object for the designers and when they needed her, she was whistled at to come. The shootings were sometimes in the cold and she was ordered to not move, while the photographer was with his big coat. Once she took the right to tell the people she was working with that she was extremely cold and she went inside. The next morning, she received a called from her agent criticizing her behavior and reminding her that “she was only a model”. According to her “being only a model” is a great summary of the fashion business. If you are wondering what is she doing now, she is doing better. She still has the after-effects of anorexia and her relation with food is extremely complicated. She still has anxiety attacks. 

Many of you are wondering how Victoire Dauxerre could have done that to herself and not quit the job. The primary answer is money. Modeling is a job, and having a job means getting money at the end of the month. All models want to keep their jobs and are ready to respond to the criteria, even if it means put their lives in danger. At first sight, it might be amazing to be a model and be on the first cover of really famous magazines and traveling all around the world for fashion shows. But the come back to reality is sudden and painful. On the designer’s side, there is a lot of money too. The collection has to be perfect and be liked from the brand’s investors. Otherwise, there is no budget for the collection to be made. From the outside, the fashion business seems really closed and stories about models that died because of anorexia is not good advertising. 

In order to protect the models from any eating disorders, on 17th December 2015, the French Government instituted a law intended to protect models from extreme thinness. This law states that before a model can be employed she has to see a doctor who will determine if her body mass index (BMI) is high enough to allow her to fulfil her functions healthily. Everyone that does not respect the law would have “6 months of prison and a fine of 75.000€”. The sanction for retouched pictures would also be at a high “fine of 10.000€ and one month of prison” (Manning). Pictures could be retouched to hid the thinness of models. Even f makeup does an incredible job to hid the livid color of the model’s face, it is still possible to recognize the difference between the face of a healthy person and the face of an anorexic person. Designers were not happy about this decision because it means that they cannot choose whoever they want and they have to adapt their sizes. One other solution for them might be to move somewhere else, where there is no regulation of the body mass index of the models. A lot of money is transported through the fashion industry, and I think that it would be necessary to build a budget for doctors. Doctors will make sure that the models are healthy and a psychologist would also be necessary to check on their mental health and make sure that they are dealing well with their job’s pressure (Wilson). 

Designers will argue and say that beauty criteria have changed a lot for many decades now, and the skeletal appearances are just momently (Wilson). Designers do not want models that wear size 3, they prefer to invest their money in someone that is size 0 and will fit in the clothes. This reality is actually wrong because when a healthy woman wants to buy these clothes, she will not take a size 0, she will more likely to take a size 2. The image that models send back to women is false. There is only a small portion of the population wearing size 0. All the big brands like Chanel, Hermès, Chloe, Gucci… design clothes for middle-age females, but these women are not size 0, and when you go in the store, you will not find any sizes that models wore. Why would models wear really small size clothes, while the buyers are bigger sizes. It means that they are lying about the appearance of the clothes, because obviously the effect on the model size 0 and on a middle-age woman will be totally different. 

It is hard to find the culprit of anorexia in the fashion industry. A lot of people working in this business are aware of eating disorder problems, but nobody seems to be ready to say stop and find a solution. The issues are so important for everyone. It is a secret for anybody that models are taking laxatives, they make themselves throw up as soon as they eat something that could fill their stomach, they refuse to eat. Even if they are not the only ones to blame, designers are still responsible for anorexia. They are creating the clothes and they could extend the seam by 3cm, after all 3cm is nothing for a cloth but for a woman it means 10kg. The more testimony we hear, the better it is, because people like you and me are humans and when it comes to putting someone’s life at risks, we should do something to protect that person. Laws like the one France instituted are a good start to fight against anorexia. This law may not be respected, people may secretly go around it, but if it became universal people could not get around it by moving from another country. To get rid of the misrepresentation of beauty, actresses should also be touched by the law. The film industry is not as intensely skinny as the model industry but a lot them do not have a healthy body. By extending the reach of this law, it could create an environment when anorexia is impossible.
