Emily

Of late, the Daily Mail has been doing the best work of any newspaper in Britain in promoting a pro-curvy stance and slamming the fashion industry's promotion of anorexia.

Now The Guardian has offered something constructive -- a transcript of a debate on body image featuring a psychotherapist, a communications specialist, a former advertising consultant, a fashion magazine editor, and a fashion model.

Their comments are surprisingly in tune with much that has been stated at the Judgment of Paris, and refreshingly, they reject many of the canards that usually come up in these discussions. Emma John, the writer of the article, appears to have been the de facto moderator.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...-surgery-debate

Here are the most significant portions:


Right away, I was impressed with this article due to the above statement. What a dramatic indication of cultural decline. Not only were aesthetic values healthier a century ago, but so were social values. The two are clearly linked. When a society sees self-improvement in the profound 1890s terms described above, it is a noble society; but when it sees self-improvement as diet-starvation and exercise torture, as is the case today, then it is a sorry society indeed.

I hope this prompts women to reconsider their appraisal of the past and to want to restore some of the nobler values that we have lost.


At last! How encouraging to see an industry professional acknowledge that the war on women's bodies is not a "cult of beauty" at all, but the opposite -- it is not beauty but ugliness that is being produced. Conformity, something "machined" -- exactly; this is what today's unnatural, androgynous standard is actually inflicting on society. I hope that more women recognize this modern vision for the soulless, unattractive look that it is.

Even the one panelist who doesn't fully recognize this as a "cult of ugliness" still commendably qualifies her use of the term "beauty":


That's crucial, because by specifying that this warped notion of good-looking is merely "in a way that's determined by society," she acknowledges that there is a notion of good-looking that is not "determined by society" -- at least not by what the modern media dictates to society -- and that is true, timeless, full-figured beauty.

Now, here's where the discussion zeroes in on models. Notice how it even begins with the understanding that underweight models are a blight:


That's a fine rejection of the absurd excuse that clothes look "better" on cadaverous famine victims. Of course they don't. The panel, commendably, rejects this myth and denounces it.

You simply must read this passage, in which one of the panelists openly states the mixture of horror, revulsion, and pity that most of us feel when we look at the fashion industry's walking corpses:


All too true -- and clearly, as the panelist's own anecdote indicates, the models don't merely look "sick, ill," but actually are sick and ill -- so much so that the models are collapsing on set.

But will even such obvious indications of the models' emaciation spark designers' consciences? I doubt it. I still remember the horrible video showing the Project Runway designers laughing -- laughing -- when they saw footage of their own models literally fainting on the catwalk.


I hope that women are turning their backs on the minus-size fashion industry. And we all know that the industry's insiders certainly are "passing the buck" on one another. Those evasions can't save them forever.

I'm less encouraged by this statement from the magazine editor, which is an excuse that we've heard before, and it remains nonsense:


But there are lots of plus-size 15 and 16-year-olds! Why not book those girls instead? Being young doesn't automatically mean "skeletal." What an intolerable position. That only suggests to young girls that if they're 15 or 16 and don't look like anorexics, then there must be something wrong with them, when the opposite is true. Looking anorexic is never the default body type -- at any age.

This panelist mentions something that many readers here have often brought up -- the need for government regulation:


The moderator then asks an interesting question and, commendably, there is none of the usual false blame towards a non-existent "patriarchy," but rather, an acknowledgment that women do this to themselves:


One panelist observes the truly tragic situation of mothers passing their own body anxiety onto their daughters, in a never-ending cycle of self-hatred:


One of the participants, wisely, points out that the problem is even more insidious than airbrushing:


Notice, with the "car" reference, how this is again identified as something that is symptomatic of a world with a mechanized, materialist mindset, treating people like interchangeable worker-drones, indistinguishable units of a so-called "proletariat."

The panel also offers a welcome slam of the horrors of any kind of cosmetic surgery (the very thought of which appalls me):


Again, a fine example of how some commentators are rubbishing the myth that the modern, unfeminine standard is in any way "beautiful," but pointing out that it is the opposite, something that produces a look that's aesthetically "awful." Because it truly is.

Not everything in the article is as on-point as one wishes, and Liz Jones's recent piece for the Daily Mail was on the whole more visceral and compelling, but this is an excellent discussion, one which shows that some of the myths and excuses that are used to justify the androgynous aesthetic are finally crumbling. I hope this continues and helps to result in the restoration of timeless beauty -- the beauty that prevailed in the 1890s, for example, which, as even these panelists refreshingly admit, had healthier values than those of our own misbegotten, modern age.

Pamela

I sense that women might, just might, finally be waking up from the delusion that the fashion industry's aesthetic represents any kind of "beauty" at all, or anything to be emulated or admired, but is in fact the most repellent ugliness.

In fact, as fashion and high-fashion models get uglier and uglier, women might recognize how disgusting this toxic look really is, and finally reject it.

A syndicated columnist who calls her column Average Josephine recently penned an article on this topic.

http://www.mlive.com/living/flint/i...shion_indu.html

Here are her finest points. The fashion industry isn't even pretending to serve women any more, or pretending to be doing anything but promoting its own perverted agenda:


Right there she gets it wrong. It's not "society" that favours these grotesque walking skeletons. It's the fashion industry pretending to be the voice of society, along with the sad women who are brainwashed by its agenda.

The column continues:


Of course it's dangerous, because, as countless studies have shown, such unnatural images directly trigger eating disorders, which are epidemic in our society

But the identification of the androgyny problem goes to heart of the matter. The designers are doing something even more insidious even than merely promoting anorexia. They are pushing their own warped vision of humanity on the rest of us.

It corresponds to what Liz Jones stated more explicitly in her excellent recent article on this topic, which was posted here. To quote from it again:


Slowly but surely, it may finally be dawning on women that they are being used and frankly oppressed by such perverted designers, who hate the way women look and shove their degenerate vision down society's collective throat, heedless of how unnatural it is and how much physical and emotional damage it wreaks on women.

As the Guardian article indicated, it is way past time for this industry to be regulated, just as any industry that has such a profound effect on the well-being of the public is regulated. The promotion of emaciated androgyny has to end, and a restoration of traditional, well-fed feminine beauty must occur.