A generation ago, fashion models weighed 8 percent less than the average woman. Today, fashion models weigh 23 percent less. The average model, dancer or actress is thinner than 95 percent of the female population.
Are you really going to say that an obesity rate of less than 14% caused this?
I can also find lots of articles discussing how fashion magazines negatively affect body image.
Women who viewed fashion magazines preferred to weigh less, were less satisfied with their bodies, were more frustrated about their weight, were more preoccupied with the desire to be thin, and were more afraid of getting fat than were their peers who viewed news magazines.
Sure, why not? After all, that 14% would have weighed considerably more than 23% more than some ideal healthy weight for their height. And there would be plenty more people who were merely overweight.
Fashion magazines remind people of their existing cultural values. When women view glamorous images of overweight people, does their self-image correspondingly improve?
Like thinness, height is associated with high social status. Then again, perhaps height better shows off thinness, or itâs easier to find tall models that look thin than short models that look thin. Bear in mind itâs quite easy to make short people look taller simply by lowering the camera.
Since I seem to have picked up the pro-personal-appearance flag in this thread, here are a few blogs that show what fashion is supposed to be about, focussed particularly on men:
The Sartorialist - shots of men and women in the street, from many parts of the world
Of course thereâs a bad overwhelming cultural focus on a narrowly-defined standard of physical appearance, but that doesnât mean the only viable alternative is to walk around looking like Comic Book Guy. All plumberâs crack stickin outta your sweatpants, fungus-ridden toenails on display in your cranchety flip-flops.
Yes. Is this a trick question? Did you actually not know that? Every time a society mag puts someone of normal or above-average weight on the cover, thereâs a flood of positive attention from women talking about how much it improved their self-confidence.
I appreciate that youâre being civil about this, and despite my snark earlier I do value some attention to personal appearance. The problem isnât that youâre waving the pro-personal appearance flag, itâs that your waving the âfatties are to blame for Americaâs disgusting fashion industryâ flag, and you should really know better.
I donât buy that. All we need do is examine the definition and various connotations of the word âunfashionableâ to discern the prescriptive nature of fashion. The âDos and Donâtsâ feature at the back of Glamour magazine has been telling readers for years what works and what, in their eyes, fails miserably at being au courant. If someone has the confidence, self-awareness, and good luck (collectively recognized as âtasteâ) to express themselves with a look that meets with admiration and approval from the arbiters of style, then that someone hasnât just spoken a language successfully; theyâve passed the test and joined the tastemakers and trendsetters, and the wannabes at a slight remove from the cutting edge might try to see which elements of this new look they might incorporate into their own expression of style, while maybe taking care not to be perceived as ripping off wholesale someone elseâs look.
This is a very different realm from that occupied by people who like to buy well-made and flattering clothes that make them happy and that look better than the clothes theyâd wear if physical comfort were the only attribute they appreciated in apparel. Some things (the little black dress, the tuxedo, etc.) have relatively timeless style, and donât tend to fall out of fashion with the passage of the season. But when we speak of fashion as the industry that employs size-zero models, we are speaking of, in essence, âa list of approved looks.â[quote=âAshleyYakeley, post:53, topic:6800â]
Trying to look better is movement upwards.
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I wasnât talking about âtrying to look better.â I said âtrying to look fashionable.â Self-improvement, even just for oneâs outward appearance, is laudable. But trying to look fashionable is something else entirely. Fashion isnât interested in whatâs actually best for one. The pursuit of a fashionably high heel could cause lasting damage. The intersection of fashionable clothes with weather-appropriate attire can often be a narrow slice indeed. And the desire to obtain a body shape remotely close to the waifs in the pages of fashion magazines⌠well, other people have gone on at length about the damage that causes.[quote=âAshleyYakeley, post:53, topic:6800â]
Please go watch Paris is Burning if you believe looking fabulous cannot lift even the very unprivileged out of some portion of their misery.
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Well, you got me there. We all must take our uplift where we can find it. And yet even though the world of high fashion is as foreign to me as the world of drag (that is, when Iâm there at all itâs as a guest and not an insider), I cannot help but feel that these are very different experiences. Experimenting with oneâs look as a form of self-reinvention strikes me as a less problematic situation than endlessly chasing a chimeric ideal of whatâs fashionable. You seem to bear the attitude that fashion is little more than breezily confident self-expression, the nearly effortless manifestation of cool exhibited by those who have somehow always found themselves lusted after by some people and admired and/or envied by others. I donât know you and as far as I know have never met you; I have no idea what you look like. Iâm not inclined to assume that youâre uncommonly and effortlessly beautiful and have gained much in life as a result of your looks. That would be unfair, totally unsupportable, sixteen flavors of rude, and not the way I run my railroad in any case. But some of the things youâve said seem to put an unusual moral weight on the value of physical beauty. [quote=âAshleyYakeley, post:32, topic:6800â]
The world should not be about equality. It should be about achievement, excellence, improvement, raising up everyone or anyone or at least someone. It should be about strength, intelligence, health, ability, beauty, power and all those other awesome D&D stats, as well as much now derided under the boo-word âprivilegeâ.
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Beauty is such an odd fit with that list. The other attributes relate directly to what a person is capable of achieving, what they can physically do, the intellectual feats they can accomplish, the influence they can bring to bear in the service of their pet causes, even the length of time they can live to perform these functions. Beauty relates mostly to who wants to mate with you. As long as Iâm gonna speak like someone who rolled pretty low when it came to my Beauty, I feel like someone who puts that much value in it sounds too much like someone who has over-relied upon it. [quote=âAshleyYakeley, post:32, topic:6800â]
You are right to point out that there is something unhealthy in the standards of thinness (mirroring the unhealthyness of so much obesity), but the solution to that is to promote oneâs own ideals, not to abandon standards entirely just to satisfy the bitter ressentiment of the lazy and ugly.
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You make no friends with that last clause. You distance yourself from a group of people that you blithely label âthe lazy and ugly,â obviously feeling that these are traits too abhorrent to have anything to do with yourself. The fact that you seem to feel that those people who object most strongly to the fashion worldâs longstanding embrace of unreasonably and unhealthily scrawny body types are just those fatasses who canât be bothered to hit the gym, or that those people who feel the fashion industry promotes unhealthily unattainable standards of wholly subjective beauty are simply too hopelessly ugly to ever matter⌠good God, what a hideously privileged and self-satisfied attitude. And the fact that you group these people together as bitter and jealous and filled with a strangely French variety of resentment toward⌠well, toward people like you, I assume, that just takes the cake.
Hereâs what this particular lazy and ugly person has to say to you: I donât wanna be you. Iâve gotten a lot of great stuff in my life. Iâve had great relationships and a rewarding career. I have a fairly vast library of books, a charming 104-year-old house, a genuinely superior (to me and everyone else) wife, a couple of promising kids, four cars, a hot tub, and a job at a storied movie studio. I have friends Iâd trust to move dead bodies. I have a large and loving extended family and in-laws to die for. I lost my religion at 17 and have been delighted with my place in the universe ever since. I got a 1500 on my SAT and Iâm the luckiest son of a bitch I know. Every good thing Iâve ever gotten has been the result of some combination of a halfway-decent brain, some (occasionally) hard work, and a support system of fantastic people. I neither need nor want anything else from my life, save the creative fulfillment that an extra dollop of self-discipline might afford if applied to my writing. But I do not object to the destructive and arbitrary standards of beauty set by the fashion industry simply because I do not meet them. I object to them because they are wrong, and because they hurt lots of people who maybe arenât as fortunate and privileged as I am. I donât mean that I have high-rolling stats on every other attribute to fall back on. I mean that I, at least, am conscious of the fact that I can get by more than just fine without relying on my looks, and a lot of people out there fear that a life outside the Beautiful Crowd is simply not worth living. Those sad, deluded souls.
âThe lazy and ugly.â Yeah, right. Those are the only ones who think your attitude is abominable.
No, it isnât. The opposite of obesity is NOT starving yourself into a medically-dangerous situation.
The fashion industry isnât teaching women and girls to eat healthily and exercise appropriately, itâs teaching them they will never be good enough unless they endanger themselves (and probably not even then). The body being heralded has no feminine curves and looks like a 10-11 year old childâs. A STARVING 10-11 year old child, or one who has had a ridiculous growth spurt so their weight hasnât caught up with their height. In no other circumstance would the fashion industryâs height/weight ratio be considered acceptable.
The fact that youâre choosing this aspect of the fashion industry to defend is quite telling.
Itâs not the opposite of it, itâs a pathological fetishised reaction to it, likely informed by many other factors. The prevalence of obesity, together with its correlation with low economic status, generates a kind of persistent subconcious disgust of body fat that some people try to obsessively disassociate themselves from. Itâs all kinds of fucked up, but Iâm not interested in assigning moral blame, only discovering causes.
You are right to point out that there is something unhealthy in the
standards of thinness (mirroring the unhealthyness of so much
obesity), but the solution to that is to promote oneâs own ideals, not
to abandon standards entirely just to satisfy the bitter ressentiment
of the lazy and ugly.
Not a SINGLE person suggested that all standards should be abandoned. Perhaps you are reading this between the lines simply because you appear have some measure of contempt for âfat peopleâ (sorry; obesity) and a great concern that such people may not be appropriately called out, shamed and corrected. Thatâs all you keep repeating; fat people, fat people, obesity, fat peopleâŚ
Current standards, by the way, do not only call for abject thinness. It goes FAR beyond fat v.s. thin. It also dictates the acceptable shapes and sizes of noses, lips, chins, breasts, eyes, limbs; the preferred flesh tones, exactly how many pores, moles, freckles, wrinkles and hair one is allowed to display in order to be deemed properly groomed and âluminousâ. If the lazy, loser fatties were the guilty party, then there wouldnât be an open war on every single bit of cartilage, bone and flesh on even perfectly svelte, young and/or otherwise healthy women. There is a rainbow of ways to hate oneâs body and every single one of them is being openly and forcefully exploited.
And the main reason is for profit.
But Iâm done here, lest I hear about some more um, lazy, ugly elephants in the roomâŚ
You have a rather narrow straw-man notion of âfashionâ. Fashion isnât the cool personâs club that you resent for not letting you in. Anyone can participate in it, and in fact almost everyone does, though too often carelessly and badly. Every time you look in the mirror and pick one shirt over another because it looks better, you are participating in fashion. And when you go out where others can see you, you are contributing to it. No doubt you think such decisions have nothing to do with whatâs fashionable or whatâs on the catwalk at Pitti Uomo this year, itâs merely your own personal preference. But your preferences have been informed by your culture, by decades of what people wear, and what other people think looks good. That is fashion. One cannot âlook betterâ except within the context of fashion. Culture is infinitely flexible, infinitely malleable even, but ultimately inescapable.
Have a look at The Sartorialist, which shows both fashion insiders and random interestingly-dressed people in the street. None of these people are trying to âpass a testâ, as you say. None of them copied some template. Mostly theyâre just going with something that suits them.
Nor can you separate âfashionâ from âthe fashion industryâ so easily, unless you make all your own clothes. You cannot even separate âfashionâ from âhigh fashionâ: they all influence each other.
No no, they all do. Beauty can equally bring influence in the service of oneâs pet cause, for instance. And it brings pleasure and interest to other people. And all of them can relate to who wants to mate with you. Ultimately strength, intelligence, health, ability, beauty, etc. all bring power, that is, the ability to change the world according to your own values (or simply get what you want), just in different ways.
If you really have rolled pretty low when it came to your Beauty, thatâs one particular area where you happen to lack a certain kind of power. Thatâs unfortunate in its way, maybe, but Iâm not accusing you of any moral failing for it.
But there are healthy and unhealthy reactions to any kind of powerlessness, even the big social forms of powerlessness. More generally, you can make an effort to become more powerful, either individually (as the political Right tends to prefer) or collectively (per the Left), it doesnât matter. For instance, if youâre underpaid, perhaps you can take classes to switch careers. Or perhaps you can organise the labour in your workplace. Either may serve your interests.
The unhealthy reaction is to locate the source of the problem in power, not in powerlessness: to normalise your own powerlessness, and denounce the more powerful as being somehow undeserving (e.g. âunearned privilegeâ) or, in your case, as some arbitrary gate-keeping elite meany poopyheads who donât really matter anyway.
I mean, perhaps looking good truly doesnât matter to you, but your list of other ways in which you are successful does seem a little defensive.
Sadly, even the usually-awesome David Mitchell fails on this.
No, like any form of endeavour and achievement, it requires effort as much as luck. Itâs up to you how much of the former you want to put into it, but you will get something out of it if you try.
I rather have to, unfortunately, because the rise in obesity is the glaring omission (better?) most every time people examine the cultural obsession with thinness.
Right now, our culture is having a kind of allergic reaction to fat people. Itâs having this not because of some nefarious plot by the fashion industry, but, I believe, because of the rise in the overall rate of obesity. Part of this allergy involves reaching for the extreme opposite, and images of thinness become desireable. Itâs this that the fashion industry has no choice but to follow if they want folks to buy their clothes and magazines. Any of them would hire fat models in a heartbeat if they were equally appealing to their customers.
I donât know if Iâd call what Iâm feeling skepticism, but I am certainly confused about whatâs going on here.
Iâve know more than a couple runway-skinny women in Tokyo, and they donât generally have troubles keeping upright. You actually see them toting kids around the city reasonably often.
The problem here seems to be people not accepting their limits. There exist women for whom that sort of frame is, if not the most healthy and robust, still reasonable. For some, it seems not to be, or at least their tactics for achieving such proportions seem not to be.
No matter how many surgeries I have and how full of drugs I pump myself, I cannot expect to achieve what pro-athletes do without sacrificing my health. The obsession with wrecking myself to achieve that ideal is my problem more than it is sports spectatorsâ and sports teamsâ problem isnât it?
Do we expect companies to boycott employees who work too hard and stress too much, thereby damaging their health? Hiring people with a serious caffeine habit = morally suspect?
I fully acknowledge, and agree that being regularly on an IV is a problematic way of life, and if the business literally demanded that, there should be some legal framework put in place.
(Iâd go into my bit about âfantasy worldsâ again, but Iâm still pretty groggy this morning.)
PS: incidentally, why do critics of the fashion industry struggle to talk about healthy body issues without insulting people? i.e. Chubby people are ârealâ, skinny women are unreal, âpubescent boysâ. Itâs like calling tall people âfreaksâ.
Iâd recommend it if you like cheesy action-horror films in general, and have some tolerance for gore and general creepiness. Itâs not exactly brilliant, but itâs a fun popcorn movie.
