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

[kezme44]

Originally Posted by nyc_art_style

no offense superfashion, but i think valda is a horrible example.

yes, but she's still our fragile elfin

[XxXRedRubYXxX]

Originally Posted by icelynn

Most models with eating disorders do not last in the industry for long at all. Natalia Vodianova, Gisele Bundchen, Kate Moss, Karen Elson, Naomi Campbell are all thin (Natalia and Kate especially) and they still have a strong modelling career but even the thinnest models on the runway today (excluding Natasha/Vlada/Snejana) don't really last longer than a few seasons, they're disposable and probably because they can't keep up with the eating disorder. It severely weakens you and as a model who travels all the time and has long days of shootings/fittings/shows it's nearly impossible to starve your body and not crash quickly. So the stereotype of all models having eating disorders is inaccurate, but there are obviously some. I think someone needs to give designers and agents a shove in the right direction, without any force the fashion industry will continue to favor the skinniest of models.

Im surprised that those three have lasted as long as they have with the exception of Natasha because we really havent seen her looking the way she has since SS08, before that she looked fine to me, The other two have looked that way since they started even though i really like Snejana

[masquerade]

Originally Posted by superFashion

Of course she is still very very thin, but she did NOt loose weight like other models,

she gained - I admit - a very little bit.

Louis Vuitton fall/winter 06/07 (celebritycity)
versus Prada Cruise spring summer 2009 (firstview):


Of course she still has a very very small body frame,
but she looks very beautiful now, no protuding ribcage or collarbones anymore:


firstview

Thats my personal view of Vlada.
If you disagree, please don't pick on me or her.

It looks more like a change in lighting than a change in Vlada's body

[CharmingNicky]

Originally Posted by masquerade

It looks more like a change in lighting than a change in Vlada's body

That is true

[Cola]

If Vlada is still too skinny now despite gaining weight then the weight gain doesn't mean anything because she is still too skinny and merely was skinnier before. But how is anyone besides her and her doctor supposed to say whether she is too skinny or whether her weight is okay for her frame? No, superFashion, you can't tell either.

[Fontenrose]

from Jezebel, the modelslips column (type it in the search bar):

After a lifetime of holding as a self-evident truth that she was thin, our anonymous model Tatiana journeyed to Paris and learned that the opposite was, in fact, the case.
...
As an adolescent, I had no trouble recognizing my body type in theirs. My measurements were 32-24-34 — perfect for scaring my doctor, sending my BMI farther into the chart's nether regions with every inch I grew, and, at least theoretically, the kind of editorial and runway work that requires one to fit into the one-off, uniformly sized sample clothes designers make for their collections' first outings. I had years of periods that came as if I were on Seasonale (I wasn't) and the friend who was my secret crush probably never realized how badly he hurt my feelings when he gave me the nickname that would stick to me through high school — Death. I ate whatever I wanted in whatever quantities I wanted, and didn't even play an all-year sport. For a time, I happened to be as thin as is currently considered ideal in one Western industry. Until, one day, sometime in college, I wasn't.
When a New York agency expressed interest in representing me, on the proviso that I trim my 26-inch waist and 37-inch hips to some more reasonable approximation of a waif, I went home by way of the library and checked out the first diet book I'd ever looked at. Three months of eating probably not enough and doing lots of yoga and weight training (which didn't help me lose weight, except insofar as muscle gain speeds metabolism, but which did give me quick results that kept me from dropping the whole exercise regime in frustration) earned me a 23-inch waist and 35-inch hips. The same agency expressed reservations about my hip measurement, but I went to fashion week and made decent bookings anyway. This was enough to merit my going on to Paris.
At the other end of a transatlantic flight, I was dropped off at an office to sign a contract in a language I don't read. Then I was introduced to a man who grabbed me by my hips and made loud exclamations in a language I don't speak. Two of the bookers giggled from across the room.
"Your 'eeps, Tatiana," he sneered, exhaling cigarette smoke. "Zey are not ze 'eeps of uh mo-duhl."
He then banned me from show castings. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.
I went to the apartment where I was to stay, I lugged my suitcase up six flights of stairs when it wouldn't fit in the tiny elevator, and I crawled under the covers of my living room cot and cried.
The next morning, when, jetlagged, I awoke at 5 a.m., I started looking up calorie counts for the foods I most often consume. I trawled the web for low-calorie, low-fat, high-fiber, high-protein, generally nutritious food. I found diets that should have horrified me alluring. I wondered whether I should consume 1400 calories a day or if I could knock it down to 1200 without provoking ketosis. Not going to castings meant I had a lot of free time, and no chance of getting any work meant I had the excuse of poverty to explain the paucity of my diet.
I exercised on the hard tile floor of the kitchen. With four room-mates filling the living room as well as the ostensible bedroom, it was the only room in the tiny apartment where there was any privacy. It did occur to me, as I did my daily 20 minutes of yoga, my daily two sets each of 20 sit-ups, my lunges with 20 pound weights, my squats, bicep curls, and tricep extensions, that trying to get my measurements within the parameters that were so comfortable when I was 14, was slightly sick. What kind of industry would demand an adult woman forever maintain the dimensions of girlhood? I often thought about this as I counted my push-ups.
I keep a document I created during this period on my desktop. It's titled "1 cup of oatmeal with brown sugar.doc" — my preferred breakfast, even though it is one that doesn't exist in France, was the first food item I thought to analyze — and it contains about 12 pages, single-spaced, of recipes, calorie counts, diet tips ("Drinking COLD water burns extra cals bc your body must use energy to bring the water up to body temp") and other esoterica of a not-quite-right mind. I lasted about two weeks in this phase — long enough to knock a half-inch off my hips and quell the objections of the smoker and get grudgingly sent to a few castings — and I never had body dysmorphia or any of the other diagnostic criteria of a true eating disorder. But I keep 1 cup of oatmeal with brown sugar.doc on my desktop to remind me how easy it is in this industry to slip into disordered eating. You have so little else to do besides watch your weight, and so many opportunities for self-denial.
That was over a year ago, and I mostly remember it as my little Paris freak-out; my reaction to a new and strange and isolating industry and one mean man. I eat more or less what I want now, and I've found that my bookings have grown as a function of my book, and bear little relationship to my measurements, whether actual or those stated on my cards. But there is a tiny way in which I feel the subjective experience of modeling dovetails with the subjective experience of an eating disorder sufferer — at least one area of theoretical accord that underlies the two.
The experience of being a model is largely one of reducing the body to symbol. When you see a model, you don't think "woman": you think "body" and its component parts. "Lips" are here symbolic of "Yves Saint Laurent perfume." "Face" means "David Yurman jewelry." "Legs" on this page represent "Dolce and Gabbana ready-to-wear."
A version of this happens live. Walking the runway is an experience like being in a diving bell: you can see the world around you, but your usual connection with it has been artificially suppressed. You must stare straight ahead, part your lips slightly, and not make eye contact. You have to look through the people who are staring at you and barking commands at you from the photographers' pit. You have to occasionally scan where those people might plausibly be, but never see them. You are, needless to say, mute, but also physically unresponsive to your surroundings. And you expect no response from them.
In 1993, during a Vivienne Westwood show in Paris, Naomi Campbell fell on the runway. The only impressive thing about this, or any other runway fall I'm aware of (save one: Karen Elson's tumble at Zac Posen this February), is that nobody — neither the other models nor the front-row audience members who sit within inches of them — ever goes to help the stricken model, even when they have tumbled from 8" platform shoes such as those Campbell was wearing, shoes that can break, and have broken, the wearer's ankles. Because a fall is not supposed to happen, the production can never acknowledge a fall when one occurs.
Reducing the body to symbol is of course what the anorexic or the bulimia sufferer does. (Or the serious athlete, for that matter.) We remake our bodies as monuments: to hungers overcome, to perceived strengths, to a gendered, formal ideal we've sized up or down to. Bodies no longer communicate want or need: we subject them to our desires, and take pleasure in their submission.
I certainly enjoyed every inch I ever lost.
I also very much enjoy walking on the runway.
But there is one way in which this industry has taught me to take less of an obsessive interest in how I measure up, appearance-wise. The feedback you receive as a model is breathtaking in its contradictions, vehemence, and beside-the-point meanderings. My shoulders, too broad for one client, will be criticized for their narrowness by another. I have been told I have too many freckles, and also too few. I've been too pale, too tan, too old, too young, too brown, too red, too blonde. I'm too tall or too short. My feet are too big or not big enough. At first, this was unsettling, and kind of withering, but it soon became white noise — when a casting agent shares advice with me ("Tie your hair back for castings!" "Walk more smoothly!" "Work out so you have some arm muscle!") I thank him or her politely and do precisely nothing — because I know the next will want to see unfettered hair, a cocky swagger of a walk, and arms that aren't as "bulky" with muscle as mine. It all cancels out, and I'm left with the conclusion that the client will cast whomever they will cast and they'll know it as soon as the right model walks in the door and nothing in my power will change that. The best I can do is show up.
It's a strangely liberating conclusion to have drawn from fashion.

[catherinef89]

Originally Posted by smartarse

take a look at the Thread : Models in a Hurry at the Etc of the Modeling World sub forum ...

if a model is suffering with eating disorder/anorexia can she do what these girls do?

*i say there's no way a model with such disorder can have that much energy , stress and adrenaline even if the model was starving themselves for 5 months straight. IMO.

Starvation often causes mania, or excessive energy.

[masquerade]

Originally Posted by Fontenrose

from Jezebel, the modelslips column (type it in the search bar):

ahh, but she just starved herself that one time, it doesn't mean she has an eating disorder or that there is a problem in the industry. If she can't handle it, maybe she shouldn't be in the industry, there are younger and hungrier girls who are willing to diet, etc etc etc

[MissAnia]

Originally Posted by kezme44

yes, but she's still our fragile elfin

Not really . For me she's just an another hyper-skinny girl on a runway.

[leiah]

Originally Posted by smartarse

i think models need the guidance of a Nutritionist on how to eat well as they prepare for a big job/s and fashion week so they don't fall into extreme bad dieting. What i see is, models are not educated enough [can't blame them] to know the proper way of eating light but still be a healthy one as well as balance it with exercise.

A light, healthy diet will get them to the lower end of the healthy weight spectrum, which is probably where their bodies are naturally. That's not thin enough. No nutritionist is going to help them get down to the weight that their agents and clients and whoever want them at.

I hate when people suggest that the girls with eating disorders are doing it wrong and they just need some sense knocked into them so they can fit industry standards in a natural, healthy way. It's just not possible. Something needs to change.

[parisia]

Originally Posted by smartarse

take a look at the Thread : Models in a Hurry at the Etc of the Modeling World sub forum ...

if a model is suffering with eating disorder/anorexia can she do what these girls do?

*i say there's no way a model with such disorder can have that much energy , stress and adrenaline even if the model was starving themselves for 5 months straight. IMO.

definitely NOT true. it may seem logical that it works that way, but i know girls with eating disorders that do heavy exercise for 2 + hours a day with either nothing in their stomach. also, when you don't eat, your bodies gets a certain 'high' and gives you a lot of energy. strange, i know.

[NickiLee]

Originally Posted by masquerade

ahh, but she just starved herself that one time, it doesn't mean she has an eating disorder or that there is a problem in the industry. If she can't handle it, maybe she shouldn't be in the industry, there are younger and hungrier girls who are willing to diet, etc etc etc

No kidding!

[nijuyanah]

... i'm actually speechless to THIS

　
snejana-onopka.co.nr

[karen sofie]

^Is that even a human being?

[Voltaire 6]

That's so sad ... she's one of my favourite models because of her face ... and what a face .. but that picture just saddens me fully

yes it's a human being and thats what's so upsetting about it all