Before you continue reading this post, just feast your eyes on Scarlett Johannson one more time. Her photos sit in yesterday's post just two slots down. Whether you think she is beautiful or not, she is HEALTHY. To refresh your memory, here is another photo of our fair Scarlett, who is no cow. I bet she is only a size 2 or 4.
Enjoyed the view? Ok, now look at these two ghastly photos of models in action.
To protect the faint-hearted, I buried the following photo. Click here if you dare to view.Frankly, I think these photos are criminal. What fashion designer in their right mind would hire such a model? What make up artist would work with such a woman and not report her condition to the authorities? What skewed individual would view these women and wish they could look just like them?
Why does the fashion industry design clothing to hang on these skeletons? Is this truly the easy route? Do clothes really look worse on regular sized women?
And why do we permit designers to get away with this outrage? Why do we purchase magazines that contain images of rail thin girls barely older than 18 wearing clothes that rarely look good on the average, healthy weight woman?
This past weekend, The Daily Mail featured an article written by former British model, Gemma Clarke (below), entitled, 'They measured my fingers to see if I was fat.' Click the bold words to read the rest of this insightful article.
Models I knew would relay anecdotes about being made to feel overweight by agencies and designers on a daily basis when they were, in fact, incredibly slim. I met up with one friend, fresh from an appointment with her modelling agency. She arrived in floods of tears, having been told nonchalantly by her booker to "skip a few meals" in the run-up to London Fashion Week if she wanted to work. Another girl I knew used a calorie-counting machine religiously to work out her exact intake. To an objective observer, she was a stick-thin girl obsessed with analysing every bite of the few morsels of fresh fruit she ingested; in fashion terms, she was a dedicated model. To me, she seemed miserable and neurotic.Gemma also mentioned, quite rightly, that our society abhors pedophelia. Yet we accept these images of girls 16, or 17 years old as the standard bearers of beauty. Is this not a form of pedophelia, albeit in an acceptable form? Below is a photo of Dakota Fanning in Teen Vogue. What is she? Thirteen years old now? And she talks about being in Paris? Whatever happened to Hello Kitty and Spin the Bottle?
We women have the power to reject these images. To not purchase the fashion magazines that feature them. To write advertisers in outrage when they use prepubescent girls to sell their products. To rid ourselves of an impossible ideal that makes us restless and want to diet when our perfectly healthy bodies are already beautiful.What are your thoughts on this topic? Are you as fed up with this situation as I am?
