Over the past few decades, 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 standard 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 (Zhao and Encinosa). 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, often developing anorexia. Designers have a responsibility in this situation. In order to transform our ideal image of beauty and the standard body, we need to hear more testimony about and from models, and we need to better regulate the fashion industry.

This paper might not be pleasant for you to read if you are 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 evidence of actual situations 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 may be impossible for you to imagine that someone you care about can put someone’s life at risk just for a fashion show. I understand this view. However, I am going to present facts that show that the fashion industry is not 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 usee 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, and many factors can lead to the disease. If your family already had some issues with eating disorders, you are more likely to be affected too: there is a 50 to 80% chance of being affected (Ros-Lehtinen). The other factors are related with mental disorders. Having 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 an individual has this disease there is no return. It is a mental disease, so the treatments depend on certain people. For some individuals, nutritional consultation and therapy will help them to reduce the disease and come back to a sort of normal life. But for others, these treatments will not help. Even if the treatments help you, there will often be after-effects for one’s 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 than they are in the mirror, tend to exercise too much, feel cold especially in the 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 is normalizing anorexic people. She is turning skinniness into something that people would want, rather than acknowledging that skinniness is a way to control women. 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 many adolescents. They identify themselves with actors and actresses in TV shows. Unfortunately, this representation of the perfect body is totally wrong. In real life, there is almost no chance to find that many skinny people in one’s situation. In many TV shows, the characters are all really thin and seem healthy, but many doctor would say that they are too skinny and 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 come 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 5ft 8in and weighted 128lb. 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 24lb 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. 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). 

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 putting their lives in danger. At first sight, it might be amazing to be a model and be on the cover of really famous magazines and traveling all around the world for fashion shows. But the return 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. 

According to Karl Lagarfeld, Victoire Dauxerre did not experience anorexia and abuse when she was a model. He stated in one if his interview that models are “ordinary, and realistic” people (qtd. in Connolly). During his career, he has been accused of using anorexic models. He defended himself by saying that this was not the truth and the people who accused him are “fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television” because they are jealous of the model’s bodies (qtd. in Connolly). Designers with this kind of opinion will reinforce the power of skinniness in the fashion industry. He moderates his extreme tone by using “ninety percent of them are quite normal” or saying that “he had never seen any anorexic models himself” (qtd. in Connolly). This statement makes him seem not credible because it is too much over the top. If at the beginning people did not believe that the fashion industry is responsible for anorexic models, after reading this article, they would have doubts about it. Opinions like Lagerfeld’s shows the need for restrictions for the designers and protection for the models.

Another example of why regulations need to be instituted comes from someone that worked in the fashion industry. A former editor for Vogue, Anna Wintour, talked about how clothes are designed. She revealed that “designer outfits are created around a live, in-house skeleton” (Wintour). If they are designing clothes on the skeletons, it means that designers expect models to be as thin as a skeleton. Otherwise the clothes will not fit. This creates the demand for anorexic models. Anna Wintour was also asked to hide anorexic models and as she tells us: 

Not every model has an eating disorder, but I would suggest that every model is not eating as much as she would like to. In 1995 I cast a lovely Russian model for a studio shoot in Paris, and I noticed that by mid-afternoon she hadn't eaten a thing (we always catered). Her energy was fading, so I suggested we stop so she could have a snack. She shook her head and replied: "No, no. It is my job not to eat." It was one of the only sentences she knew how to say in English.

This story demonstrates how models are pressured to stay thin, and how important this job is for them because they are willing to stop eating. All models have a problem with food even if they are not anorexic. Anna Wintour was a professional, who is now telling stories about anorexia and wants indirectly to help the models. 

In order to protect models from eating disorders, on December 17, 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 if 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; 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 that beauty criteria have changed a lot for many decades now, and the skeletal appearances are just a phase (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. There is only a small portion of the population wearing size 0. All the big brands like Chanel, Hermès, Chloe, and Gucci, design clothes for middle-age females, but these women are not size 0, and 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. They are not the only ones to blame. Designers are responsible for anorexia. They are creating the clothes, and they could extend the seam by 1.2in. After all, 1.2in is nothing for a cloth but for a woman it means 22lb. 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 covered 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 where anorexia is impossible.
