Super Model Resource

Ford believes that the next year trend would concentrate on the feminine figure. Model van der Wal wants to include women of different figure types in Cover Shot. She believes that women have different shapes and sizes and it should be encouraged and celebrated.
Cutrone says that the models outlook is as per the consumers demand. If they do not want thin models, industry will not have thin models. Fashion people are only interested in money.
“And the one thing they know is people want clothes to cover their bodies,” Cutrone says. “Unfortunately, most people aren’t comfortable with their bodies.”

The times are changing and it was noticed in this year’s fashion shows in New York. There were the thin models and also models with a bit of flesh added to their skeleton making them look more healthy, womanly and normal. These models did quite well and they were used by designers like Ralph Lauren, Bill Blass, Marc Jacobs and Donna Karan. Ford, whose agency supplied models to these top designers says, “Our models who did very well this season were not super-skinny. However, there were some on the runway who were very thin.”

People who own modeling agencies and the editors of fashion magazines have a great role to play in discouraging very young girls from appearing on the runway who have not even developed their curves and appear to be stick thin or coming from the hospital. One such Editor-in-chief of the Glamour magazine Cindi Leive says, “ Any responsible model booker will tell you they turn away girls who get too thin.”

Kelly Cutrone, owner of People’s Revolution, a company that produces fashion shows around the world, opines that the runway models are so thin that when they bend , their rib cages can be seen. She feels that these models are naturally thin and other women with normal body structures should not try to be like them and ultimately harm their health. Kelly Cutrone is the owner of People’s Revolution, a company that produces fashion shows around the world.

Cutrone says. “Clothes look better on thin people. The fabric hangs better.” So models are mere hangers to display clothes and not a symbol of beauty. The average age of models is 16 to 17 years and most of them are in the age group of 14 to 19 years and weigh approximately 120 to 124 pounds with size 2 to 4 . If the models are heavier than that then they don’t fit into the clothes and are dropped from the show. This means that it is not the models who are responsible for this image building but the whole fashion fraternity which includes the designers, fashion coordinators who encourage unhealthy practices. Co-operation from everyone is necessary to change the scenario.

Stephanie Schur who is a designer conducted her first runway in New York few weeks ago. She considered models with glowing skin and healthy look for her show.

She rejected models that looked pale and had thin hair.

But most of the models today look the same. They are all beautiful but none of them is extraordinary. Runway concentrates more on the clothes. They look for girls who best suit their clothes.

Schur believes that young girls do not consider runway models as their image. In fact they are keener to imitate the actresses.

Every woman want to be pretty because in today’s world “we know more about women who look good than we know about women who do good,” says Audrey Brashich, a former teen model and author of All Made Up: A Girl’s Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty.

Brashich read number of letters from young girls who were keen to become famous models, singers or actresses while she was working at Sassy and YM Magazine.

She said, on the basis of culture we were at par with women like Paris Hilton or Nicole Richie. She also said that women who are thin and beautiful become celebrities while women who actually bring amendments remain unknown. Mostly people have a tough time naming women who are accomplished in other fields. Considering models, stars and celebrities as our idol, this will not change until the pop culture changes the sight of women they consider their idols.

Even young girls are susceptible to this mad race of looking a certain way and this has a very negative effect on their mental as well as physical development. They are always under pressure to look a certain way to be accepted as sexy and beautiful. This pressure in the growing up years prevents them from concentrating on their career goals and aspirations.

The population is being constantly being bombarded with TV commercials, magazine covers, hoardings showing these ultra thin models over and over again.

The celebrity images of Nicole Richie and Kate Bosworth make matters even worse. According to Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt., ” these images are making girls as young as 9 and 10 vulnerable to falling prey to this sexy image.” What worries her all the more is that they start working on this from a very young age and are even encouraged by their parents to do so.

This feeling of wanting to be sexy is ok for the teenagers but such behavior at a preliminary stage in life should be negatively reinforced. The pressure and hype is so much that girls shy away from sports also because the athletic figure is not considered sexy by many.

Murnen has studied this topic for 15 years and he remarked “We have done studies of grade-school girls, and even in grade 1, girls think the culture is telling them that they should model themselves after celebrities who are svelte, beautiful and sexy.”

Murnen’s research says that only 18% of the girls in the vulnerable age group do not get affected by this and are supposed to have high esteem for their bodies. But this is a very meager percentage. 6000 girls were studied and it was found that the more the girls were exposed to fashion magazines, the more risk they had of having a poor body image.

Katie Ford, chief executive officer of Ford Models has a different view point. Her megastar models include Christie Brinkley and Rachel Hunter .She thinks that the thinness propaganda among models in U.S.A is not the problem. The actual problem is obesity and the dangers associated with it. She says that “You can look as far back as Greek statues and paintings and see that. It’s part of women’s fantasy nature,” Ford says. “The question is: When does that become destructive?”

She says that eating disorders and obesity are a result of numerous issues and cannot be blamed entirely on the television, glossy fashion magazines and entertainment industry.

Ultra thin models were banned from appearing in the Madrid fashion week, as they were too thin. The organizers wanted to project a healthy image and not make beauty and skinny synonymous.

The organizers of the fashion show in Britain rejected the idea of banning ultra thin models saying that it interfered with the creativity of their designers.

Designers feel that fashion looks good on skinny models but according to German supermodel Claudia Schiffer, today supermodels are unhealthy rather than beautiful. She says “ It doesn’t really look good anymore. Fashion looks good on thin models but when you look at today’s models you cannot help but think there is something wrong. They are way too thin. It is only bones that stick out.”

New research has been conducted at the University of Sussex by Dr.Helga Dittman and Dr.Emma Halliwell from The University of West of England. The research was conducted to show that there is no positive relationship between using thin models for advertising and the selling of the products. The study was conducted on 800 women and the researchers compared the impact thin models had having size 8 in comparison to normal sized model having size 14 and in the healthy body weight category. It was found that the thin models portrayed a larger than life image and established negative feelings in women watching them. On the other hand, the normal sized (size 14) women enforced positive feelings in the women watching them and was good for the sales of the products they were endorsing.

So we can conclude that thinness does not sell. It is the healthy body image that sells
This unreal image has created an unhealthy feeling in women who no longer like their bodies and always suffer from anxiety leading to stress and eating disorders. Women resort to severe dieting to the point of starvation leading to anorexia nervosa (which is self-starvation, low weight and fear of being fat) to bulimia nervosa (the binge-and-purge disorder). The number of people in the U.S.A having an eating disorder is 24 million. The vital step to be taken is to educate the youth about the dangers of eating disorders.

One of the major concerns faced by the fashion capitals across the world is that “models are too thin.” The fashion industry across the globe is buzzing about the fact that more rib cages and vertebra are visible which was a serious issue of concern in the New York fashion week. It just came and went by with very few people taking notice of the underlying problem.

The abnormally thin models project a very unhealthy image for the youth. The norm today has become “Thin is beautiful”, but in reality it isn’t by any standards.

Milan, Italy, the fashion capital of the world has cum up with a solution by asking models to submit a health certificate before being allowed on the ramp. This is similar to the test athletes have to go through. This will immensely help in projecting a healthy and beautiful image in public.

Designers are often blamed for encouraging this concept of “thin is beautiful” which encourages diseases like anorexia, bulimia, psychiatric problems in the young generation who try to emulate the models.