ERagsdale

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/merc...ld/16534711.htm

Apparently in Spain, at least, they're taking the anti-skinny-models thing seriously. I thought this article was an encouraging sign and hope the idea takes hold elsewhere, as well.

kirsten

Yahoo News has featured an additional report on changes in Spain:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2007012...in_070123175627

full text with some salient points in bold:

Spanish fashion houses agree anti-anorexia 'charter'

Tue Jan 23, 3:31 PM ET

MADRID (AFP) - Leading Spanish fashion houses including Inditex and flagship brand Zara agreed an unprecedented move to draw up a beauty "canon" including harmonising dress sizes after a recent storm over the number of young women suffering from anorexia.

The 12-point package of measures, or beauty "charter" -- drawn up with the health ministry -- includes a stipulation that shop windows display sizes of 38 minimum (size 10 in Britain, eight in the United States) and that size-46 apparel be placed in easy view in stores under the generic label "large sizes."

In a joint statement the couturiers said they intended to harmonise sizes in a bid to reduce the possibility of "consumer error" with sizes currently not in sync from one firm to the next.

Aside from Zara, other signatories included Cortefiel, Mango and chain store Corte Ingles as the Spanish firms, most of whom also sell their wares abroad, are reacting to concerns that anorexia is on the rise and that models are "excessively thin."

The charter, whose measures will be progressively introduced, aims to mark a break with showcasing models of beauty which are "impossible to reach for most people" and "can contribute to serious health disorders," such as anorexia, a health ministry statement said.

The measures are based on a biometric study of 8,500 Spanish women aged between 12 and 70 begun earlier this year, the ministry said.

Last year, Madrid's prestigious Pasarela Cibeles fashion show banned five models from participating because they did not meet World Health Organisation (WHO) weight guidelines.

A Madrid regional law aimed at fighting anorexia also ensured the five were discarded from last September's event when it emerged their body mass index (BMI), calculated on a height-weight ratio was under 18 (56 kilograms for 1.75 meters or 123 pounds for five feet eight inches).

And earlier this month, Madrid authorities this week took the fight against anorexia into cyberspace by forcing the closure of a website promoting the ideal that it's hip to be thin, after lambasting the site for publicising a competition offering would-be models prizes for losing weight.

Recent studies estimate that more than 100,000 Spanish women are anorexic and that up to half a million Spaniards suffer from various food-related disorders.

***

HSG

Spain remains the one country in the world that truly appreciates the extent of the problem, and is willing to implement the entirely reasonable measures that are necessary to remedy it.

One would prefer that the free market settle the matter, but if the free market is not free, if an industry becomes monopolized by individuals who collectively impose a harmful vision, to the exclusion of any other, so that competition is never permitted (as is the case in the fashion industry today), then government intervention is the only thing that can break the logjam.

However, it is interesting to note the following comment from original article that Ms. Ragsdale posted. Here, a minister in the Spanish government explains the rationale for her government's actions:

"It is not reasonable for a modern and advanced society to establish stereotypes of beauty that are far removed from the social reality of a community. It is everyone's commitment that beauty and health go hand in hand," Health Minister Elena Salgado said at a signing ceremony Tuesday.

Very true, but note the phases "modern" and "advanced." Those are precisely the troublesome notions that created this problem in the first place.

The politically-motivated push, early in the 20th century, to make society "modern" prompted the reflexive rejection of everything that was unmodern--especially feminine beauty. Consequently, timeless ideals of appearance, which were natural and healthy (both personally and socially), were displaced by standards that are unnatural, artificial, and ruinous to women's health.

The error, of course, was in associating "new" and "modern" with "advanced," when the opposite could be true. In fact, as a century of history has shown us, the overturning of traditional values with "modern" values (aesthetic and otherwise) has often led to the poisoning of culture, not to its advancement.

Hopefully, the Spanish efforts will help bring about what is truly necessary for the tyranny of modern thinness to end: a restoration of the timeless ideal of plus-size beauty that gave society a comfortable and natural concept of femininity to worship, for millennia.

Nisha (JE Models, size 14) with a seductively languishing look, in a curve-adoring, traditional feminine dress:

The attire is in perfect harmony with the model's soft, unmodern beauty.