Modeling is not just glamour, fun, and as easy as it may seem. It contains much more than just being pretty and being good at posing for the camera or walking down a catwalk. The fashion industry is for many models mentally tough. There is a lot of pressure being put on them to look a certain way which leads to serious mental and physical health problems for numerous models. This impact the fashion industry has on the models’ physicality, breeds and contributes to various kinds of eating disorders, which in itself already is a rather difficult and catastrophic situation (Hoskins, 2022). But that is not the only issue, because the pressure has been resulting in causes of death.
The fashion industry’s requirement of being extremely thin and a specific size is outrageous. It is almost a mentality and mindset that says you can never be too skinny (Hoskins, 2022). Even young girls who have not developed a womanly figure yet get told to lose weight and likewise with women in their 20s, it is unnatural and impossible to for example shrink your waist when it already is developed, unless you starve yourself to make the appearance of your waist smaller.
Did you know that 54% of models have admitted to skipping meals for the purpose of losing weight? (Rittenhouse & Ekern, 2022).The eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa is a disorder that causes severely restricted eating habits. It is both mentally and physically harmful for a human being.
Tansy E. Hoskins stated in her book “The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion” that;
"It’s not even ‘eat healthy to be skinny’; it’s just ‘don’t eat’. A lot of agencies recommend living off water. Water, coffee, and cigarettes are a recommended diet still." (Hoskins, 2022).
This recommended lifestyle for the models, caused in the early 2000s a long series of deaths related to the demands of being extremely thin and slender. The year 2006 consisted of several deaths in the fashion industry.
Luisel Ramos, a Uruguayan model, died right after she got off a catwalk during the Montevideo Fashion Week. She died at the age of 22, of heart failure, which was caused by the eating disorder, anorexia nervosa. Only a few months later her little sister, Eliana Ramos, died too. Eliana died at the age of 18 of, a heart attack caused by malnutrition. Another model, Ana Carolina Reston, lost her life in 2006 from self-starvation, after being told she was "too fat" at a casting. Reston ended up weighing only 38 kg while being 175 cm. (Hoskins, 2022).
Coco Rocha was told at 15 years old that; "The look this year is anorexic. We don’t want you to be anorexic, just look it" (Hoskins, 2022). All these examples are indeed a sign, that the fashion industry’s requirements for models to comply to a determined aesthetic are deadly and damaging. The fashion industry is a toxic environment, that needs to change from this unrealistic view of the body, which leads to a negative body image, to a more body-positive environment.
Bibliography:
Hoskins, T. (2022). Chapter six, The Body Politic. In T. Hoskins, The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion (pp. 158-194). London: Pluto Press.
Rittenhouse, M., & Ekern, J. (2022, January 1). Eating disorder hope, Models and Eating Disorders, Models and Anorexia Nervosa. Retrieved November 2023, from Eating disorder hope: https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/risk-groups/eating-disorder-models
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