Image credits: https://schoolworkhelper.net/essay-eating-disorders-in-the-fashion-industry/
Trigger Warning: This article contains topics that could be trigger for people who struggle with eating disorders
The Fashion business is filled with images; websites, magazines, social media and runaway shows. Through these platforms an ideal image is sold to us- in the 20s a thin body with no curves whereas in the 50s an image of larger hips and a fuller bust was sold, nowadays an hourglass, toned figured is promoted through social media.
The truth is that the human body is shaped in a diversity of shapes and sizes. Nonetheless, in the Fashion world there is only one body which is promoted as the “standard” type, tall and thin.
Major brands of the world, specifically magazines and during the runaway shows, models are put under pressure to lose weight in order to promote the unhealthy image of an “ideal body type”. As Victorie Dauxere, a model who almost lost her life to anorexia wrote, Karl Lagerfeld prefers women with a flat chest and Miuccia Prada stares at models like they’re clothes hangers. In an interview for a website named Flare, Victorie said;
“Because they do not treat us as human beings. It’s like, “Oh a chair is broken, we can get another one. Oh a model died, let’s cast another one.” There is no humanity or dignity or respect. It is a huge issue we need to talk about and denounce. You can’t mistreat people that way—or ask people to lose so much weight. It’s really a public health issue.(…) When you are suffering from it, you are in complete denial. I saw the other girls and thought, “Oh my god, they are going to die. They are so skinny, but I never thought I looked like them. I saw myself in the mirror and I thought I was fat.”
Nonetheless, the pressure to lose weight is not only over models, but also on the people who buy the images the Fashion Business sell. Today, various women who buy magazines who feature pictures of extremely thin, unhealthy models. Hence, these women are forced to compare themselves to those models, being pressured to fit into the standard “aesthetic” of extremely thin, underweight bodies.
However, it is not new that the fashion business prefers super skinny models. In the 1960s, for instance, Twiggy was one of the most famous models in the world and known for her slim body, without any curves.
Twiggy, who was named the “face of 1966” by The Daisy Express.
Image Credits: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2019/09/naturally-twiggy-confronts-the-toxic-nature-of-body-image-shaming/
However, images of ultra-skinny models only became to be officially sold out by the Fashion Industry after the 1980s, when the Grunge era become. From the 1980s to the 1990s not only were eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia promoted but also drug and alcohol abuse.
Kate Moss, for instance, was on of the grunge era’s most fashion models and was known for her extreme thinness due to cocaine abuse and anorexia.
Kate Moss for a Calvin Klein company in 1985
From the 2000s until nowadays, the majority of images promoting unhealthy body standards come from lingerie campaigns. Launched in December 2001, Victoria’s Secret fashion shows featured, for more than a decade, models who had to go under extreme diets and workout routines in order to be cast into one event. The “Victoria’s Secret Angels” are the models who sign a long-lasting contract with the brand and have their whole job relying on their body image.
Edward Razek, who worked as Chief Marketing Officer for Victoria Secrets, once said in a Forbs interview that when a model asked him why she did not get the job he replied,
“Every night, I see a picture of you on Instagram from a club, night after night, and every night [while] you were doing that, Adriana Lima was jumping rope for three hours.”
Adriana Lima at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show in NYC
Image Credits: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/nov/22/victorias-secret-show-angels-lingerie
As the brand put various amounts of pressure on models, the images that it sells continue to put this pressure on the buyers. Although the show had ended in 2018, the body type promoted in Victoria’s Secret fashion shows is still majorly promoted on social media and other runaway shows.
As the images are publically sold out to anyone who has Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok downloaded, the image of a “perfect” body is immensely promoted. Specifically for young girls, the promotion of this image can be extremely persuasive in making them believe that their body should look exactly like a Victoria Secret’s model.
A student who has struggled with several eating disorders in the past, and chose to remain anonymous, said in an interview for this article,
“Seing them (the Victoria Secret’s model) everywhere, tiktok, instagram and even on the TV can feel like brainwashing. After you watch a video or two you are completely convinced that it is your obligation, as a young woman, to have the same body as them. Since I was 12 years old I’ve been struggling with my relationship with food; eating didn’t satisfy or bring pleasure to me anymore, it felt like shame, guilt and pain. I tried to work out, diet and even force myself to throw up at 2am thinking I could wake up the next morning and finally feel satisfied with my body.”
As seen in models, women, and even teenage girls in high school, the promotion of unhealthy body images is way more than a selling strategy for the Fashion Business, they are trying to convenience you that in order to fit into the pattern you will never be enough. Scientifically, people have different bodies and different needs. Hence, most times, no matter how hard you exercise to make your body look like someone else’s body, it will never work- not because you are not enough but because you have a different body shape than theirs. Therefore, that is why the fashion industry can be so toxic for women; it is constantly promoting this image.
EAC PRESS 