The blog world has been going crazy with fashion week images and telling us what’s the next big thing we should be stocking our wardrobes with but quite frankly I don’t give a shit if stripes are in or out this spring; the real issue for me is the size of the models strutting down the runway – or stalking their way to an early grave if we’re being precise. Every year we are force fed articles about how damaging images of malnourished models are to the general well being of teenagers and grown women alike. Every year we hear about how fashion houses are going to be more responsible and only showcase girls with BMIs in double figures. When Crystal Renn walked for Jean Paul Gaultier it seemed like a positive step in the right direction; alright it was one model for one designer but it was a start. Now she is a UK size 6 and it seems like everyone else has moved on from the gimmick of ‘healthy bodies’ and gone back to showing the same emaciated, half dead bodies of before.
This year the elephant in the room has been Andrej Pejic; a male model doing the rounds for big fashion houses like Jean Paul Gaultier ( always one of the first to jump on a fickle trend clearly) and Jeremy Scott
Yep he’s gorgeous and he’s also taking attention away from the fucking massive issue of the female models
These girls don’t make me want to buy these clothes. The clothes look awful; they are hanging, they are showing bones and sinew and pain. These figures are not natural. They don’t just happen for gods sake; these girls are forcing their bodies to look like this. Naturally thin girls don’t have bones poking through their skin, don’t have hollow, dead eyes or dull dry skin. These girls look sick. The last time I saw skin and bones like that it was before I was admitted to hospital with an eating disorder and yet no one seems to be doing anything about these girls.
The fact that Crystal Renn, despite being massively applauded for her plus size figure and scoring campaigns with loads of different fashion houses, still decided to make the decision to go back to being tiny; it’s telling. It’s worrying. It doesn’t matter what we do individually – if the overwhelming consensus is to allow women like this to destroy their bodies in the name of fashion then we are never going to get anywhere. In the last image of Chloe Memisevic I think it’s pretty interesting that none of the women in the background watching her have a similar body type and yet no one is looking shocked or scared by her skeletal frame. It is almost as if we expect models to look like this and so become blinded to how damaging it actually is. When shows do have a token plus size model, they drag out some toned size 12 and sit smugly safe in the knowledge that they have ticked a box. It pisses me off so much; these models are unhealthy. what kind of impression is that? what kind of example are we setting to young girls when we let models who should be in some rehab room somewhere strut down a catwalk in the latest must haves?
