This weekend's edition of
The Observer news magazine included the most comprehensive account I've yet read about Ana Carolina Reston, the second model who died from anorexia, last year.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/maga...usrc=rss&feed=1
It's an even more agonizing story that I ever realized, and the article is very good about identifying the fashion industry's culpability in this model's death.
Just a few excerpts:
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Although anorexia isn't the preserve of the fashion industry, it's hardly surprising that Reston's death has shone a spotlight on the way the business treats its models, and more significantly, on how destructive our current perception of female beauty can be.
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This remains the crucial point - what's even worse than what this underweight standard does to the models themselves, is what it does to society in general: encouraging women to adopt this critically unhealthy (and potentially fatal) appearance, and severely warping society's views of what is healthy and normal.
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'Everyone knew she was ill,' she says. 'The other girls, the agencies, everyone. Don't believe it when they say they didn't.' Reston's aunt, Mirtes Reston, who plans to present a petition to the government demanding steps to monitor the modelling industry...
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I hope she does present such a petition, and that the government - all governments - take such steps. They are obviously extremely necessary.
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In a letter from 40 doctors at the Eating Disorders Service and Research Unit at King's College London to the British Fashion Council last October, Professor Janet Treasure wrote: 'There is no doubt there is cause and effect here. The fashion industry showcases models with extreme body shapes, and this is undoubtedly one of the factors leading to young girls developing disorders.'
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Could they put it any more plainly? How is it possible that the industry remains in denial about this?
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This is borne out by Tommaso's experience. 'If someone is just a tiny bit bigger than the industry demands,' he says, 'they are treated as if they were morbidly ob***. This encourages a pattern of beauty that is absolutely unreal.' Such pressures, he continues, lead many such women to build up what he calls 'an arsenal of anorexia'...
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The article proceeds to identify the truly horrifying things that models do to themselves, to look as shrivelled as they do. So much for the absolute nonsense that "models are healthy." Pathology in mind and body is the standard, not the exception in this industry.
This comment by the model's mother broke my heart:
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When she came home again, in late 2005, she was barely recognisable - gaunt and colourless. As Miriam Reston recalls, 'I looked at her and said, "My daughter, what have they done to you?" I wish these people could see what they have done to her. She didn't deserve this.'
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And not just to her - to women everywhere; yes, to ALL women, who cannot see or appreciate their own beauty when they are curvaceous-looking, and instead appraise themselves by the twisted standards of this industry.
15th January 2007
Ana Carolina Reston's tragedy
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