The Model & Celeb Weight Thread [Read post #1 before posting] #1

[pinkpalm]

Dickinson is so screwed up that she has begun to think everyoe else is like her. However, I don't think Casablancas, Wilhelmina, or any of the Ford's would have thought anything different (these were people that were giving models quaaludes and sleeping with Stephanie Seymore when she was 16 or so). The only difference is that they aren't delusional enough to admit it. Plus, with Janice, if you say black she'll say white.

[rouge_red]

That is sad. And it improves everything I think of modelling in the industry That's absolutely terrible.

[kateelle]

I think shes a repulsive, sad person. Everything that comes out of her mouth, her actions, the demeanor is so crass and unsincere. Yet, she deludes herself and projects to the world how "real" she is. She needs to be outrageous to be noticed because there is no susbstance behind this women. I used to be amused and entertained by her, but those comments are

[masquerade]

I am in awe of Natalia's eloquance and bravery to get up there and talk about that. Good for her. Sadly, I'm sure many models feel the same, but they cannot express themselves because they haven't gained "supermodel" status

Here is an article from the New York Times today. I bolded a quote from Irina that contrasts Natalia's

Looking Beyond the Runway for Answers on Underweight Models

By GUY TREBAY
Published: February 6, 2007

While a vast majority of Americans spent Sunday on a sofa watching men shaped like large appliances move a football up and down a 360-foot field, 15,000 New Yorkers, who probably wouldn’t know a pump fake from a wishbone formation, spent the day ogling women shaped more or less like coat racks move dresses up and down 400 feet of runways in Bryant Park.

You don’t often hear Super Bowl and Fashion Week mentioned in the same sentence, but there is a link between the two, and it involves body image. Skinny models became a hot-button topic when the global news media got hold of the public relations mess the industry stumbled into after two models in South America died of anorexia nervosa last year. Suddenly trade groups around the world started wringing their hands about eating disorders.

The Spanish banned underweight models. The Italians decided that in the future (meaning probably not until 2008) models would have to be over age 16, have a license and a body mass index above 18.5 percent to gain employment. The French, maintaining they already had strong rules on the subject, predictably dismissed the issue.

In this country, where polls drive most things, the industry response gained impetus from a Nielsen Company survey of 25,000 people in 45 countries, which found that 81 percent disapproved of “extreme thinness.” In short order, the modeling agencies that manage the most notoriously underweight women abruptly benched them.

All of a sudden some of the most in-demand models — the Eastern European blonde giantess, the knock-kneed Russian beauty with the far-off expression, the multiply pierced beauty with the Olive Oyl limbs — disappeared. Just as suddenly, the picture every agency photographer was assigned to grab backstage at the shows was of a model sitting with a plate of food.

Commendably, the Council of Fashion Designers of America convened a symposium on Monday morning to ventilate the issue and to put forward some recommendations for addressing the customs of a business that, far from showing much historical concern with the health and well-being of models, views them as commodities. No one who has spent any time around fashion is a stranger to the notion that models, like milk, have “use by” dates. No one has failed to hear tales of scouts who discover some beauty working in a doughnut shop, who dangle promises of wealth, fame and escape from the family pig farm (true story) and then hand her strict instructions to shed the excess cruller pounds.

Curiously, the evidence of model shrinkage was there all along, easy to track. “In 1986, the standard size was 4 to 6,” Ivan Bart, the creative director of IMG models and arguably the most powerful agent in the business, said on Sunday at the Diane Von Furstenberg show, referring to standard sample sizes. “Then it was a solid 4. Then 2 to 4. Then zero.”

Ms. Von Furstenberg, who is the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, also brought up dress size. “Models have always been skinny and tall, and that’s fine as long as they’re healthy,” she said. Scanning a room where 50 rangy but apparently well-nourished women hired for her show were lounging, she posed a question.

“What size do you think my dresses are? A 6.”

Perhaps that is so. But is the point that models in general have been encouraged to conform to unnatural shapes or that everyone has?

“What about Hollywood?” asked the Canadian model Irina Lazareanu at the Luella Bartley show on Sunday. “What about ballet schools? What about gymnastics camps?”

What about cheerleading clubs or racetracks, where jockeys have blithely been destroying their health for decades by abusing with laxatives and diuretics and emetics in the effort to make weight? What about gyms, and not just the steroid temples of extreme bodybuilding?

“We shouldn’t look only at an industry that happens to be in the headlines during Fashion Week,” said Dr. Evelyn Attia, a director of the Eating Disorders Clinic at Columbia University Medical Center. This is far from the first time that models have been singled out, and not coincidentally moralized about, as potentially unhealthy and somehow inherently bad. Healthy or ill, their images are always reliably good for improving ratings and newsstand sales.

“It’s hard, with obesity being so urgent a health issue for such a large population, not to encourage thinness,” Dr. Attia said. “But with it comes a vulnerability, probably for a small group, but an important group, with a mortality rate as high as that of any psychiatric disorder.”

To the surprise of some, the most articulate speaker at the Council of Fashion Designers symposium was the model Natalia Vodianova, who talked about what food meant to her growing up poor in Russia and what it meant once she became one of the world’s most sought after models, had a child and gained 15 pounds.

It happened that I visited a French Vogue shoot in Paris months after Ms. Vodianova gave birth to her first child and was as impressed as anyone else at how quickly she regained her gamin figure. At the time, I thought she must be genetically blessed. But of course she was starving herself because designers had complained that she no longer fitted the clothes.

“You have to look at this as a cluster, with models as just one part,” said Dr. Cynthia M. Bulik, a professor of eating disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a former president of the Academy for Eating Disorders, after Monday’s meeting, which she termed an anemic response to a major problem.

“A number of industries are now making people reach weights in order to be effective in their jobs,” Dr. Bulik said. “The N.F.L. is beefing people up to unhealthy proportions. Modeling is chiseling people down.”

Designers like Donna Karan blame agents for sending them underweight models. Agents blame the designers for demanding skinny girls. The people who run fashion wring their hands and express a sincere although not altogether focused concern. Fashion Week comes to an end on Friday. Will the issue disappear when the caravan moves on?

I think one of the most surprising thing about this article, however, is one of the pictures that accompanies it


they don't say who she is or what show it is, but they are pointing out that she is eating. But look at her arms .

both article and picture from new york times

[elegantly_wasted]

i think this weight regulation is fantastic!

As a student who studies psychology... we analyse what it is to place "aspirational" characters on runways and ad campaigns to create more demand for products.. as well as celebrities who jump on the size 0-2 band wagon... and these things result in unnecessary pressure on the consumer and public... if it didn't then why is the weight loss industry so huge... and why is the eating disorder turning into a wide spread phenomena..

so.. I think it is a fantastic move, and I also think that people like Janice Dickenson, are on their way out.

[city girl]

god irina..this is about modelling. you can't pass it off and talk about gymanstics or ballet. girls don't worship gymnasts or ballet dances as much as they do models. i know that a person has to take responsibility for the way they see themselves but seeing stick thin models (like herself) won't be helping.
sorry i just find everything she says about this issue quite irresponsible. sounds like she just wants to hold onto her title as a top model

[BaroqueRockstar]

^irina used to be a dancer, though, so i can semi-understand why she wants to bring that up. it's also kind of interesting that when i took psychology, when we were learning about psychological disorders and anorexia, their examples were mostly gymnastic...
there are similarities. both the modelling industry and ballet, the thinness is required for arguably aesthetic purposes...
nevertheless, irina has lost weight since she first started modeling, so with that experience i think it's same to assume modelling = more pressure to be thin

[Jacque Marcel]

I don't understand why the fashion industry just doesn't own up to this problem? If one of the top models in the world, Natalia, is telling the things are messed up, why aren't people listening?

[*Bianca*]

Olga's arm.. so thin.


getty

[BaroqueRockstar]

^
please tell me that's photoshopped. she's one of my new favs too. lovely face, gorgeous hair... please don't turn into a skeleton!

[*Bianca*]

I don't think it's photoshopped...I got it straight from Getty.

[superFashion]

Olga has been very skinny all the time. She did not gain so much weight as other models while getting older but she gained a bit. I think thats just a bad photo of her.

[jadore21dior]

about sasha: it seems like she's always a little heavier in NY than at the later shows, maybe she likes to be heavier on the off season and thinner during the shows? i've noticed the same with gemma and a few others.

[ChristieHumble]

I think those Janice Dickinson quotes are some of the most disgusting things I've read in a while. What a deluded woman. There are intelligent ways to defend the fashion industry, and that was just not remotely close.

[misssakura]

About ballet, people like Darcy Bussel have done a really great service to the industry by proving you can have a life, enjoy life, eat food and still be a fantastic dancer. I don't think it's as necessary to be super thin in ballet anymore. And the new york dance movement has really helped in that regard too with people of all shapes and sizes showing that movement is beautiful no matter what you look like.