While I feel where you’re coming from, I don’t know that you can just flat out say that eating disorders are a learned behavior. Using the base that you provided, it’d be just as easy to say that cultures that emphasize plumpness suppress natural eating disorders.
Personally, I don’t blame the industry for its selections for models. Obviously, the problem of who they choose isn’t endemic to the industry as much as it is endemic to the society it is creating a product for. Has the fashion industry evolved to a point where it affects the personal perceptions of the entire society involved? Maybe, but, even then, I feel like it’s the individual families involved who need to be addressing these social issues.
For that matter, does anyone have any studies that show why certain people become obsessed with becoming fashion model skinny? For every girl that I’ve ever met who had (or might have had) an eating disorder, I must know a hundred or more who grew up without the problem. Is it parental in nature? Or was it just a secret for many? Honestly, I can’t imagine that most of the women I’ve known had the problem, so what makes them all different?
I’m a guy, and I’ve never had a BMI higher than 20 in my life (right now, it’s 17.8, just busted out with a calculator to find out). I’m also ugly, so fashion modeling has never been an option in any case. And there needs to be a LAW barring people from jobs that they just HAPPEN to look right for, despite PUBLIC DEMAND for such appearances, because they MIGHT WELL influence some to HARM THEMSELVES in order to LOOK like their heroes (heroines).
WTF?! I hate snotty BPs as much as anyone, and I still don’t begrudge them that they can make a living on their looks. What’s next, you can’t make a living on your muscles, because amphetamines and steroids are so available to make you a better baseball player, you have to do something else for a paycheck because Jose Canseco is too irresistable a role model for aspiring young athletes?
I’m standing up for an industry that I personally find revolting, for no other reason than that once in a while, I really do think it’s NOT somebody else’s fault that somebody is screwed up.
We have all kinds of laws regulating the work place. How many hours you work, what kind of breaks you get, safety equipment, and these days, smoking. If I can’t hire someone to do a dangerous job without providing the proper safety equipment (say a fireman or someone working in a foundry), why would hiring practices that require unhealthy weight be different? All those employees are adults, but society has declared that they must have safe working environments.
There is a subgroup that believes eating fewer calories will lengthen one’s life. I remember reading an article about a guy who would not eat more than 1200 calories a day. I’ve checked out some websites that claim they are not anoroxic because they are doing it for “health” not “fashion.” And they claim they eat “healthy” just “less.”
That’s a ridiculously oversimplified view of well over half a century of labor battles.
And labor did not win those battles to form the society we have now until the Supreme Court lost its older, conservative members during the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. It was the effects and aftermath of the Depression that changed society to put a Democratic administration into power who could appoint more labor-friendly judges. It was a major cultural change in American society. The workers, hard as they fought for so many years, did not get their changes into effect by themselves. It took sympathetic government intervention, first from the Progressives and the Republicans who adopted their ideas and then from the Democrats who took over that legacy when the Republicans became conservative again. Much is made of Roosevelt having three Republicans in his cabinet, but they were ex-progressives and far more liberals than southern Democrats were in those days. That’s how it happened.
I haven’t seen any groups of restaurant workers marching to outlaw smoking in restaurants, but that’s what more and more states are doing. At least in Minnesota, the claim is that it is to preserve the health of the staff.
CRON - Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition. They read more like a cult than a group of dieters, really. There’s a good, if long, article here (don’t cut out before you reach the bit about the orange guy, at least).
Look, my view may be a bit oversimplified, but you’re committing the exact same crime.
You’re telling me that if laborers hadn’t complained these labor laws STILL would have come into being? That they were spontaneous acts of compassion to an uncomplaining populace? The “sympathetic government intervention” had to have some position to be sympathetic with, obviously.
Just the fact that you called it labor battles shows that you agree with me, but you just didn’t understand what I said for some reason. It doesn’t matter how long they battled or the political situation in which they battled. What matters is that they protested their treatment and insisted on something better. This caught the hearts and eyes of politicians, judges, the public, etc.
Show me the equivalent plight of the fashion models. Show me something to get my heart and head behind. You can’t, because there’s no such cause. Is that because the fashion industry is self-selective? I can accept that, they are adults, after all, and they work in the advertising/entertainment industry. They don’t work in coal mines. They work in an industry that is almost impossible to regulate meaningfully.
And, on that point, what exactly is the regulation you folks are talking about anyway? BMI quotas? Calorie intake quotas? What? A ban of skinny models?
On second thought, as I delve into this issue deeper and deeper, I actually like this idea of BMI regulation. On the same principle, we ought to expand it to further serve the public good. Parents should be required to meet certain BMI expectations to have children. Children should meet certain BMI standards to receive public education and scholarships. For the role model aspect, anyone who appears on television, movies, newspapers or magazines also needs to meet stiff requirements. Etc.
OK, I’ll admit that the last part is a little over the top, but it’s really already happening in our society.
My final point is that until you can prove that the fashion industry forces eating disorders upon its workers, you have a case that’s only as strong as “Well, computer programmers tend to be overweight/underweight, so we should regulate the computer programming industry to ensure that they aren’t putting undue pressure on programmers to be overweight/underweight.” There may be a strong correlation, but that isn’t proving it. As said before, the fashion industry might just attract the naturally skinny or naturally prone to eating disorders.
But the thing that this twists on is that there still has to be a model who needs to take legal action against her modeling agency for pressuring her to specifically develop an eating disorder. After that, I guess it would be up for judges and society to decide. Note that it can’t just be an accusation that the industry prefers thinness. A lot of people, and I don’t necessarily include myself when I talk about this position, would say that if they are not willing to be healthily thin then they should quit. Or if they don’t have the natural capacity to do so, they shouldn’t work in an industry that likes thinness.
First, the fact that a smoking ban in bars/restaurants isn’t comparable at all to a law governing the models in the fashion industry. The argument you seem to be making is that because “A industry” can be shown to be under a certain regulation “B industry” should surrender under the same reasoning. Do I need to explain how restaurants and bars (walk-in establishments for entertainment, eating and drinking) differ from fashion models?
And besides that, what exactly does it matter that Minnesota created a law for that peculiar industry? What bearing does that have on any other law independent of it? The only connection, and tenuous it is, is that both laws concern the public health. Ah, but that’s almost every law. Your point is sort of moot. Nevermind the fact that smoking has a huge, demonstrable impact on public health.
Finally, if we’re going to ban skinny models, how do we determine who is naturally skinny and who has an eating disorder? How is this going to be enforced? For years, I’ve had a natural BMI that was well underweight for my age and height. That was on a 2.5k-3k Calories a day diet! You’re saying that if I was a model, I could face losing contracts or not being hired at all because of this? That I might have to subject myself to measurement by the government in order to proceed with wearing clothes and having pictures taken of myself?
Better notify Hollywood. But I insist that if we’re going to take off unhealthy thin people, then we also omit obesity from the public eye. Fat acceptance, after all, can hardly be said to be for the public good. Right?
Fair enough. Let’s immediately put an end to all employment which requires obesity.
The quest for thinness is so extreme that even the skinny models are thin enough. Still more pounds are shaved off with the computer in fashion magazines.
I remember reading somewhere recently that it is not unusual for the models on Project Runway to faint when they have to stand for very long.
Nobody is even talking about the kind of laws you refer to, in this thread or in the real world. We’re talking about health and safety measures for an industry, just like any other.
I keep seeing an odd morality in posts against the idea of regulation, one that states essentially that models somehow doesn’t deserve to be protected. They’re adults. They’re not starving children. They don’t stand up for themselves. In what other industry would anyone dare use these arguments to deny health and safety regulation protection?
I’d suggest that you all stop thinking of models as models and start thinking of them as construction workers and see if that makes a difference in your moral viewpoint.
(And if you can’t wrap your head around the idea of models as construction workers, here’s some visual aid for you.)
We’d need more information to judge the relevence of that. Strong healthy soldiers sometimes faint if they stand for too long at a parade for instance.
Exapno, I am trying very, very hard to understand what your point might possibly be in citing a handful of miscellaneous lawsuits that the fashion industry is facing. What, exactly, does a civil suit about a defective bra have to do with this debate? What does a suit about fraud? What does a suit about misrepresented jewelry images? None of that, including your quoting of a blog, seems poised to strike at the argument at hand.
And since you decided to “use my words,” I would hope that you would take the time to read and understand them. To reuse them again, do I need to explain to you why adults are different from children?
The difference that doesn’t seem to be getting grasped here is that construction workers are helped by regulation that is fundamentally different from that which might govern modeling. Take a look at construction regulation. What are the regulations? Wear a hard hat. Don’t leave loose nails lying about, must have certain licenses, etc.
Where, in that, do the regulations follow the construction worker home?
What’s more, construction sites aren’t exactly the death pits people make them out to be. Without regulation they would be, sure. Does the fashion industry compare at all in injuries/deaths to pre-regulated construction site casualties? No.
Do you know what the government’s time could be better spent on? Fighting eating disorders in an effective way. Did you know that (2005 stats) we spend $159 per person on researching/treating schizophrenia, but we spend only an average of $1.20 on eating disorders?
Instead of spending millions upon millions of dollars on regulating the fashion industry, why aren’t we spending some time addressing the problem at home or in the community?
Sorry for the tangent. I actually wrote out a further response, but I realize that we’re getting further away from GQ material. If we continue, we should probably do it in another thread in GD.
That’s the article I read. Their websites are really strange–we are proud of doing this, it’s healthy, we are going to live forever, we can eat out and don’t have to hid from social situations.
You are right about it being a cult. The members display that same smug self-righteousness of “We’re so much better than everyone else.”
