Madrid bans too-thin models from catwalk

[MrsSpringsteen]

people.com

Model Petra Nemcova knows what it's like to struggle to be a size zero in order to stay on the runway – and says she went on brutal diets and even took laxatives to stay thin.

"I went through so many diets in my life. I've been very, very skinny. I've been a size zero but I'm naturally more curvy," she tells PEOPLE. "I ate just vegetables, carrots, tomatoes. I went from a just-protein diet to just eating apples to eating no carbs. I took laxatives. I went through all of it just to be able to model."

Nemcova's comments come in the wake of a decision earlier this month by Madrid Fashion Week officials, who set off an international catfight by announcing that models participating in Fashion Week shows there had to meet a weight standard: Their body-mass index needed to be at least 18 – or 122 lbs. for someone 5'9".

Some fashion-world movers and shakers share their take on the new rules with PEOPLE:

• Designer Donatella Versace: "The house of Versace has always used women as opposed to girls in our fashion shows and ad campaigns. I have always preferred to work with models that have feminine curves over too thin models."

• Stylist Rachel Zoe: "I don't think they'll ever get banned. I think that as an industry we should promote healthiness. I think that there's a small grey area between being too skinny and sick versus being a thin person. I think if everyone looks to Kate Moss, I mean, she looks great, she's not too thin, she looks healthy."

• Designer Antonio Pernas: "I had to change the whole lot (of models in my show) in one day! (But) this industry sets an example to young women, so I'm not against the measures."

• Model Kimberly Stewart: Should the Madrid ban be adopted worldwide? "I think, yeah, I think it should. (The super-thin image) is not good for underage girls, I agree. In New York and Los Angeles it's the same."

• Designer Ben de Lisi: "I chose all my models because they are healthy and beautiful, and whether they are skinny or curvaceous, as long as they are healthy, they're on my catwalk. If they look beautiful and they look healthy and they're naturally thin, then they will go on my catwalk. Full stop."

• Actress Thandie Newton "Some women are just naturally very slim. I don't think that fashion necessarily promotes a very skinny look anymore. There are a lot of women in the public eye – and actors have a lot to do with that – who have a more curvy physique, (such as) Scarlett Johansson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who are hugely admired by audiences. If anything, I think there's a wider range of body types now for fashion."

[LarryMullen's POPAngel]

Originally posted by MrsSpringsteen


• Stylist Rachel Zoe: "I don't think they'll ever get banned. I think that as an industry we should promote healthiness. I think that there's a small grey area between being too skinny and sick versus being a thin person. I think if everyone looks to Kate Moss, I mean, she looks great, she's not too thin, she looks healthy."

Ms. Heroin Chic herself? Sure, she's naturally that way but to me she looks sickly. I'd rather have Catherine Zeta Jones and Scarlett on the runway than her.

[MrsSpringsteen]

Well Kate Moss now compared to how she used to look isn't AS skinny, that's the only possible perspective I can view her statement in. I guess when you're a stylist to stick thin celebs (I believe she works with Nicole Richie just to name one), you start to think Kate isn't too thin.

I think it's unreal that Petra Nemcova did that and felt that pressure and thought she was too curvy to be a model. She is stunningly beautiful. Good for her for speaking out.

[MrsSpringsteen]

from that new Red Independent

The Third Leader: Not too thin...
Giorgio Armani
Published: 21 September 2006

Ever since I started out as a fashion designer, I chose to use models who were on the slender side. This was because the clothes I design and the sort of fabrics I use need to hang correctly on the body. I want the dresses to seem to float and flow with the body.

Gianni Versace was a very different kind of designer. He used jerseys and chiffons, which needed a body of a certain shape to hold the fabric. He used more voluptuous models. The particular styles I designed were quite different, and this is why, maybe, I was regarded as being among those designers who used slim women as models.

But I do not feel responsible for setting a trend towards models who look anorexic. As so often in the fashion world, things have been taken to extremes. And unfortunately there are a lot of young women who never accept that they are thin enough - and this is an illness.

In my view, all women want to look much slimmer than they are, and this encourages them to be very careful about what they eat. But there is a similar issue at the other end of the scale: there are very few women who have just the right degree of voluptuousness to be pin-ups.

Most of the comment on this issue of anorexic models - like comment on anything - tends to exaggerate the problem. But the fact that we are dealing with the world of fashion, where so much is exaggerated anyway, means there has been a particular lack of balance in this discussion.

No one in fashion wants to really address this issue or take responsibility for the images they put out there as standards. Same goes for Hollywood.

[najeena]

What is attractive? Slim? Plump? It's a health and image issue that has changed with the times. Skinny used to mean poor, that's certainly not the case today in developed countries. Who hasn't heard the quote "you can't be too rich or too thin"?

[MrsSpringsteen]

http://www.modellaunch.com/buzz/popnews.php?id=4003097

Update: In a major editorial today, Where Size 0 Doesn’t Make the Cut, The New York Times comments on the death of Luisel Ramos, a Uruguayan model who had been ordered to lose weight and died of heart failure after taking her turn on the catwalk. She reportedly had gone days without eating, and for months consumed only lettuce and diet soda.

According to Vivirlatino.com, The young Uruguayan model died of heart failure while participating in a fashion show during Fashion Week in Montevideo (Uruguay). The 22 year-old Luisel Ramos felt ill after walking the catwalk, fainted on her way to the dressing room and died in spite of the medical attention she received from a mobile hospital unit, sources told EFE. The doctors who treated her diagnosed her with heart failure. The young woman's father told police that the model had gone several days without eating.



Where Size 0 Doesn’t Make the Cut


Published: September 22, 2006

If fashion models were purebred dogs instead of underfed women, there would be an outcry over the abusive standards for appearing in shows and photo shoots. The prize for women who aspire to the catwalk is a ridiculous size o, though overachieving undereaters seem to be reaching for size 00, which invites further starvation, serious illness and worse.

If the industry needed a wake-up call, it got one last month, when Luisel Ramos, an Uruguayan model who had been advised to lose weight, died of heart failure after taking her turn on the catwalk. She reportedly had gone days without eating, and for months consumed only lettuce and diet soda.

Nevertheless, organizers of Madrid’s Fashion Week caught designer and fashionista scorn for banning the unreasonably thin from their show. The Madrid standard: a minimum body mass index of at least 18 — a measure of body fat based on weight and height. A reading of 18 is still underweight (18.5 to just under 25 is considered normal), but it is outsized among the ranks of supermodels, many of whom hover between 14 and 16.

While the just-completed New York Fashion Week carried on as usual, Milan Fashion Week officials were considering applying their own healthy standard for models.

It’s doubtful that models will be in dressing rooms bulking up with cheeseburgers or anything more caloric than watercress to “make weight,” like prizefighters and amateur wrestlers. But ending the parade of the starved and sickly seems like a fashion trend worth following.

[vaz02]

I prefer girls with a bit of meat on em .

[Zoots]

Originally posted by vaz02
I prefer girls with a bit of meat on em .

Amen!

[INDY500]

...and while we're at it, let's get rid of those little equestrian pip-squeak horse racing jockeys. What kinda man weighs 110 lbs anyway? I say, let's get more John Wayne/Hoss Cartwright body-types out there on the track, you know, so the regular guys of the world can relate more to "the sport of kings."

[MrsSpringsteen]

article from today's USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...n-models_x.htm

I read in People Magazine that a size zero is now big on Kate Bosworth because she has gotten so thin

"We know seeing super-thin models can play a role in causing anorexia," says Nada Stotland, professor of psychiatry at Rush Medical College in Chicago and vice president of the American Psychiatric Association. Because many models and actresses are so thin, it makes anorexics think their emaciated bodies are normal, she says. "But these people look scary. They don't look normal."

The promotion of the thin, sexy ideal in our culture has created a situation where the majority of girls and women don't like their bodies," says body-image researcher Sarah Murnen, professor of psychology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. "And body dissatisfaction can lead girls to participate in very unhealthy behaviors to try to control weight."

Girls today, even very young ones, are being bombarded with the message that they need to be super-skinny to be sexy, says psychologist Sharon Lamb, co-author of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers' Schemes.

It used to be that women would only occasionally see rail-thin models, such as Twiggy, the '60s fashion icon. "But now they see them every day. It's the norm," Lamb says, from ads, catalogs and magazines to popular TV shows such as America's Next Top Model and Project Runway. "They are seeing skinny models over and over again."

On top of that, gaunt images of celebrities such as Nicole Richie and Kate Bosworth are plastered on magazine covers, she says.

What worries Lamb most is that these images are filtering down to girls as young as 9 and 10. Some really sexy clothes are available in children's size 6X, says Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vt. "Girls are being taught very young that thin and sexy is the way they want to be when they grow up, so they'd better start working on that now," she says."

[U2democrat]

My favorite dressy pants are a size zero
I think the jeans I have on are a size 1...I'm not sure.

I just have a fast metabolism, you'd be amazed how much junk food I eat

However models who starve themselves skinny look unnaturally gross and make me sad.

[Muggsy]

I've been reading this post for days, and this week I've heard on the news that Medellin (Colombia) is the city with the highest rate (in the world ) of girls and young women who suffer anorexia and bulimia. Unfortunately that doesn't surprise me cuz Medellin has been know as a fashion city, and most of the colombian models are from there. it is already a public health problem.

[MrsSpringsteen]

Perhaps he was trying to be sarcastic rather than make a positive statement, but some of those people must have been traumatized by seeing a woman that size. They probably ran out screaming or something...


http://www.smh.com.au/news/fashion/g...641392975.html

The Paris shows kicked off with organisers saying they would not ban skinny models from the runways and Jean Paul Gaultier weighing into the debate by hiring a 132-kilogram model.

In what seemed more of a nod to front-row guest, the burlesque artiste Dita Von Teese, Gaultier sent out the plus-sized Paris-based American model and actress Velvet d'Amour, 39, in a satin corset and negligee. The rest of his collection was on a "workout" theme, an athletic wear-inspired collection of silk track pants, hooded sweat tops and dresses.

[INDY500]

From the Fantaisie de Lunch Lady collection.

[MrsSpringsteen]

A model presents an ensemble by French fashion house Guy Laroche, during the presentation of its Spring-Summer 2007 ready to wear collection in Paris, Saturday Oct. 7, 2006

[deep]

two images of different size women have been posted for us to view



each of these women are responsible for their size and health

because of what they choose to pick up with their own hand and put into their mouth (and bodies).

I strongly believe in the Body Mass Index for health reasons

I believe the big woman is in greater danger

I am not giving a pass to under eating.

[MrsSpringsteen]

The point for me isn't who is in greater danger, and maybe that could be argued- that second model looks like she's starving to death. The point for me is more like..the second model is increasingly becoming the standard by which all women are judged, and not just in the warped world of modeling. So much so that the average woman is considered overweight in the eyes of many, and in the media in general. In Hollywood, and in everyday life.

Obviously a happy medium between those two pictures would be the optimum for health and appearance, but I have to wonder how many people would choose to be the second picture rather than the first (going just by weight, not face and all that).

[MrsSpringsteen]

By the way that larger model- when she first started modeling developed an eating disorder. She used to eat 500 calories a day maximum and sometimes just two crackers a day.

[Pearl]

Sales boom for size zero clothes
Last updated at 11:55am on 10th October 2006


Doctors are blaming the fashion industry for a sales increase in size zero clothes


Doctors today issued their strongest call yet for superskinny models to be banned from the catwalk as it emerged size zero clothes are enjoying a sales boom in London.

In an open letter to the British Fashion Council, 40 doctors and health professionals at London's biggest eating disorders clinic demanded a ban on "models who are clearly anorexic".

"There is no doubt that there is cause and effect here," said Professor Janet Treasure of the Eating Disorders Service and Research Unit at King's College London.

"The fashion industry showcases models with extreme body shapes, and this is undoubtedly one of the factors leading to young girls developing eating disorders."

The letter has been prompted by a debate on size zero models, which began in the Evening Standard and followed the decision by the organisers of Madrid fashion week to ban models with a body mass index below 18 - classified as underweight by the World Health Organisation.

Professor Treasure added: "The Spanish example is very sensible. Eating disorders go hand-in-hand with a range of other problems, including substance abuse, behavioural issues and self harm.

"If young girls are seeing these poor role models, they can develop habits that are very difficult to shift in later life."

The letter, printed below, calls for London's fashion and publishing industry to ban models deemed too thin by medical guidelines.

American size zero - equivalent to UK size four - is on sale in shops such as Miss Selfridge and Top Shop. Size zero trousers are for a 22-inch waist - the average measurement of an eight-year-old girl.

A shop assistant in Topshop said the size zero clothes, part of the chain's petite range, were selling very quickly. She said: "There are increasingly very, very thin women, who look as underdeveloped as pre-teens and they seem desperate to fit into the smallest sizes."

Caroline Williams, 27, a picture editor from Wapping, normally wears a size 6 or 8 yet she struggled to fit into size zero items on sale.

Ms Williams says she often gets abuse for her tiny frame and has even been asked if she has an eating disorder.

She said: "I'm naturally thin, but to think there are girls that want to get into clothes this small is madness. What happened to a size 12 being normal?"

[MrsSpringsteen]

Senseless tragic death




Before her death last week from anorexia, Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston was robbed of both her beauty and her strength by the disease, friends say.

Earlier this year, when she arrived at the Mexico City airport after a job in Japan, she was too emaciated and weak to carry her luggage, fellow Brazilian model Aliana Idibar, 21, tells PEOPLE in its new issue. "I helped her," Idibar says. "I was holding myself not to cry."

Once luminous, Reston had become a virtual skeleton. "The skin was gray. The eyes were sad and without light," recalls Estela Saenz, owner of a Mexican modeling agency, who last saw Reston at that time.

Still, the ambitious model continued to work, posing for a fashion Web site as late as Oct. 18. The next day she canceled a bridal magazine booking to enter a São Paulo hospital, carrying only 88 lbs. on her 5'7" frame.

Friends were grieved, but not entirely surprised, to learn that on Nov. 14 Reston, 21, had died from multiple organ failure caused by anorexia.

Reston's passing adds fuel to the outrage over too-thin models. "I understand that in the industry there is pressure to be skinny," says Gisele Bündchen, the Brazilian supermodel, who never met Reston. "But (this) is what happens when people take things to extremes."

In truth, Reston's illness was one more hardship in a life riven with them. Five years ago robbers stole everything from her impoverished family's rural home outside São Paulo. "From that moment, Ana Carolina had to work to help pay our bills," says her grieving mother, Miriam, 58, whose husband suffers from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Signed with Ford Brazil in her early teens, Reston never grew "tall enough for the (runway)," says Lica Kohlrausch, director of Brazil's L'Equipe agency, which took her on last year. She tried to compensate by losing weight, says Miriam. "She said, 'Mum, I will get thinner. I can work more if I'm skinny.' "

Her health declined, but Carol, as she was known, brushed off the concern of family and friends, many of whom donated blood during her hospitalization. There would be no saving her. Says Miriam Reston: "I want this to be an alert to other mothers."