Skewing Ourselves Sick

There are two phenomenas happening in the United States currently, both as dangerous as the other while opposing each other on the proverbial spectrum of weight. The obese are getting bigger and the waifs are getting smaller. What is going on in our media and consumer culture to promote such mirrored results?

In an article in the New York Times today, “The Vanishing Point” reveals the newest fashion trend to be the super-skinny male. It seems that since various campaigns have been launched as of late against the detrimental effects of the female fashion industry and their promotion of eating disorders and the like, the male side of fashion has come to the forefront to take its place. “Where the masculine ideal of as recently as 2000 was a buff 6-footer with six-pack abs, the man of the moment is an urchin, a wraith or an underfed runt,” writes Guy Trebay.

This comes at a time when female models are being checked at shows worldwide for possible nutritional deficiencies, like in Spain a year or so ago when models had to be chosen with a health body mass index, or in Italy when physicians were available at casting calls. Within the last couple of years there has been an outcry from the female majority that the models we were bombarded with on a daily basis were not a reflection of the population and being presented as such was forcing young girls and women to develop diseases like anorexia or bulimia, or simply into deleterious body images of themselves.

Not too long ago, two models in South America died from eating disorders that manifested themselves because of these women’s careers. A closer look into the fashion industry reveals other harmful means to keep weight down and off, including Vicodin and Clenbuterol (both appetite suppressors), as well as chain-smoking habits (with the nicotine providing appetite suppressants).

Although plus size models can be found more often now than ever before, the images perpetuated by television, movies and magazines are still almost solely the tiny, skinny, emaciated models that achieve their body shape almost solely through unhealthy means. And now it appears that male models have taken up similar methods to appear the same.

Now I, for one, never really understood the fashion industry. The short clips of runway shows I’ve caught while skimming channels on a boring Wednesday night have revealed to me outrageous garments nobody would dare wear in public, let alone a raucous costume party. Who’s buying these clothes anyway? Certainly not the American majority who, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are taller and very much so heavier than 40 years ago. The clothing fashionistas are proclaiming to be the current “rave” will not fit most of us; if they do, they most likely will not look all that flattering. Hasn’t the time come to present clothing people will actually buy and wear? People who are not the small minority of rich and famous?

I find this all interesting on a sociological level, especially after catching an episode of Queer Eye’s Carson Kressley’s new show, “How to Look Good Naked.” Kressley takes women who have very poor body images and helps them realize their assets. One means of doing this is by taking semi-nude photos of the women and displaying them on a billboard for the public to see and rate. Kressley then asks men and women on the street to tell him what they think of the naked women before them. In the episode I saw where I woman with a beautiful hour-glass figure as displayed, almost every bystander remarked on her figure, most men saying they preferred a little meat on their women. If this is so, why are America’s models stick-thin? If the male/female fantasy is not to go to bed with skin and bones, why are we portraying that as the image to aspire to?

I think it’s time for our media to depict men and women in a realistic way. Maybe then the self-esteem problems and eating disorders of the newest generation can be averted.

~ by peacewriter313 on February 7, 2008.