Meredith

Anyone who has any remaining doubts about how contemptible the people who run the fashion industry are, and how urgently this toxic industry needs government oversight, needs to read this appalling article:

http://jezebel.com/5468831/

What it's about:


The panel included, among others, Doutzen Kroes (the ever-so-slightly-non-emaciated skinny model), Anna Wintour, and a really revolting personality in the designer Zac Posen.

It's just repugnant to find all of these people passing the blame from one to the other. The photographers and editors blame the designers, the designers blame the magazines, and on it goes.

There are small moments of sanity:


And some points that will make you sick:

That's rich. Deny, deny, deny; criminals that they all are.

In other words, "I don't have to do anything until someone else does something, so we'll all agree to do nothing."

Anna Wintour comes across especially badly:

BINGO. That unnamed designer has it right. It's not changing because Wintour is not changing it! All she would have to do is state that no models under a certain size would ever appear in her magazine. But of course she's not going to do that. How sickening to see these people trying to place the blame on someone else when it's their own decisions that are creating and maintaining this appalling situation.

But there's no doubt that Posen, the designer, comes off worst:

The gall of that is amazing. So this designer is being forced to promote eating disorders because that's "cool"? Where does he get the idea that such a thing is "cool"? If killing people were suddenly "cool," would he be compelled to promote that? What nonsense. It is NOT cool at all, and him pretending that it is, or thinking that it is, simply indicates how twisted his mind is, and how irresponsible it is to allow him, and people who think like him, to have control over our culture.

Anyway, the whole "youth" issue is a big red herring and a distraction. There are plenty of size-16 teenagers, plenty of plus-size girls the same age as the runway models, who could be used instead of the waifs. The only issue is size. Age is irrelevant.

But the real a-ha moment, the real smoking gun, comes in the designer's appalling statement at the end:

What??? There you have the problem. Calling a grotesquely emaciated person "cute and hot" indicates how warped the designer's thinking is.

What would it say about a person if they called a corpse "cute and hot"? That's basically the mindset we're dealing with here.

I never knew anyone who considered Moss "cute" or hot," nor did most of America. Far from it, her malnourished appearance was (and is) repulsive. If you have an industry of people thinking THAT is "hot," there's something wrong with all of them.

Anything who considers androgynous-looking models "cute and hot" has a serious disorder, and has no business dictating aesthetics to the rest of society.

Allowing people who regard starving models as "hot" to tell women how they should look is criminally irresponsible. These people are the equivalent of crack peddlers. Their industry needs to be stopped, because as this article early shows, they will NEVER change on their own. Ever.

These CFDA discussions are only lip service, only meant to give the appearance of concern, the illusion of doing something, without actually DOING something. The people involved are all passing the blame, all trying to evade responsibility, and at bottom the real problem is the perverted anorexia-fetish of the people in this industry. Their hardwiring does not permit them to change their aberrant standards. They need to either be forced, by law, to stop peddling anorexia, or simply be banned from influencing the culture.

Hannah

The article is just maddening. The comments are spot-on, though, and a lot of them sound similar in tone to the themes of the Judgment of Paris. Almost everyone who reads the article is sickened by this industry and the people who run it.

One of the commentators included this pithy quote:


That's why it makes me sick when apologists for "high fashion" actually try to praise the industry for being a haven, a refuge, for the "outsiders" and the "weirdos." Oh, really? That's a good thing? NOT. It results in an industry of anorexia peddlers.

Really, look what the result is. You have an industry promoting eating disorders, institutionalizing a hatred of natural femininity, and dictating to the rest of society that the only acceptable type of appearance is artificial-looking androgyny.

Maybe if the industry was cleared out of these vaunted "outsiders," maybe if it included some voices from the world of "normal," the world of "Middle America," of the "bourgeoisie," or whatever other categories these outsiders like to revile, maybe then the industry wouldn't be such a toxic influence on society, and could actually be reformed.

M. Lopez

A new article at the New York Daily News echoes the criticisms.

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyl...is_too_fat.html

The tone of the piece is rightly one of outright disgust with fashion.


It's because yet another model has been deemed "over"weight by this truly sick industry - at a size 4.

Ridiculous as that sounds, like something out of a parody of fashion, it's an actual fact, and with real-life consequences.


The article doesn't pull any punches, openly calling the CFDA meetings "useless," and pointing out that the very people who are meeting to supposedly solve the problem are the cause of the problem.


It is beyond madness that they should be speaking of "raising" the sample size to a 4. In what sane world could it ever have gotten below that in the first place? A size 4 is skeletal; anything below that is a corpse. For heaven's sake, the size-6/8 models of the '80s were too thin and caused eating disorders due to the emaciated look that they had because of their excessive height. Size 4? Size 0? That shouldn't even be allowed as an exception, let alone as a twisted "norm."

How could an entire industry full of people with such a perverted fetish for emaciation be allowed to exist? Asking them to reform themselves is like asking crack dealers to set the nation's drug policies.

The personalities that we're dealing with are children - irresponsible children who will keep doing monstrous things until someone disciplines them.

The only way to solve this problem is with strict, binding legislation that once and for all outlaws this criminal behaviour.

Kaitlynn

Cocho Rocha is the model referred to in the article that M. Lopez posted, who has lost jobs because her tiny size-4 frame is considered "overweight" by some designers. Yesterday, she wrote a fine piece on her Web log expanding on her points:

http://ohsococo.blogspot.com/2010/0...nt-of-view.html

Her statements are excellent. They're the kinds of things that we wish plus-size models would say, rather than being apologists for the industry.

Here's an especially trenchant passage:


What I would like to see is someone - a journalist, a member of the public, anyone - address that question to every single straight-size designer in the industry today; every single booker, every single photographer. They all use these size-0 models. They are all complicit in implementing this toxic aesthetic. How DO they justify it? How can they? Their actions are indefensible.

Also, Rocha commendably comes out in favour of regulations on the fashion industry:


I think she's far too optimistic about the CFDA actually wanting to change the industry. As the first article in this thread indicates, there is no evidence that any actions are being taken, or will be. But that only adds force to her proposition for legislated rules of conduct for fashion.

Hopefully, some people who would otherwise ignore such arguments will heed them, now that they are coming from a well-known model.