Fashion industry takes on anorexia…

Posted by mija on Jan 18, 2007 in Insider, Scandals | 0 comments

It took the deaths of four emaciated young Brazilian women to goad the fashion industry into attacking the twin maladies of anorexia and bulimia. In Madrid and in Milan, fashion show organizers have banned those deemed too thin from taking part. And in Brazil, where similar steps are planned, supermodel Gisele Bundchen has decried as unhealthy the obsession with thinness as the way to success.
Indeed. Thin may be fashionable to many, but there ought to be limits when the consequence can be a premature death.
Last September, Spain’s association of fashion designers banned too-thin models from participating. And at Milan’s Fashion Week next month, models will be accepted or rejected based on a body mass index, the ratio of weight to the square of a model’s height. Thus, for example, a model who is 5 feet, 8 inches must weigh at least 122 pounds.
It’s ironic that the recent deaths in one of the highest-paid industries occurred in Brazil, where, according to government figures, at least 8 percent of the 185 million population is considered too thin — but not from anorexia. Nearly all are malnourished because they are poor, a problem the government says it is combating with monthly stipends.
Not only fashion models have succumbed to the temptation to take risks to achieve perfection and success in their craft. Athletes who take steroids not only give themselves an advantage over competitors who don’t; they also put their health at risk, in a few cases unto death. But in the case of fashion models and some entertainers — remember Karen Carpenter? — obsessing about being thin can become a medical problem that deserves to be treated as such, including by those who employ people who, in some cases, risk starving themselves into an early grave.