Weighty Matters

The specter of dangerously thin models has raised its beautiful, lolling head once again, this time at New York's Fashion Week, which ends Friday. Stung by negative publicity about boney apparitions on the catwalks, the fashion industry invited eating-disorder experts to an unprecedented symposium on the subject in the tents at Bryant Park. It was quite a spectacle. The press was regaled with tales of models living on lethally small amounts of lettuce and Diet Coke. The fashionistas declared that super thin was now "out" and promised to keep a better eye on the young waifs. But no one in the U.S. clothing biz seems eager to impose minimum weight guidelines on models, as some European shows have done. Diane von Furstenberg, president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), added fuel to the fire when she recently told a reporter that model weigh-ins in New York would happen "over my dead body."

While the travails of the thin and beautiful almost always make for good copy, we should remember that only about 1 percent of the American population is anorexic, while nearly two thirds of adults are overweight or obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So it's not as if skinny models have inspired an epidemic of slimness. In fact, the real danger may be that the contrast between the girls on the catwalks and the girls at the mall is creating an atmosphere ripe for binge dieting and the kind of unhealthy eating habits that ultimately result in weight gain, not loss. "You always [have to] look at the discrepancy between the real and the ideal," says Cynthia Bulik, a clinical psychologist who heads the eating-disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "If [kids] see themselves gaining weight and then they see these ultra-thin models, the discrepancy between how they see themselves in the mirror and how they feel they have to look is bigger. And that can prompt more extreme behaviors." 

Unfortunately, that gap between the ordinary and the elite is growing rapidly. As American women have gotten heavier, models have gotten thinner and taller. Twenty-five years ago, the average female model weighed 8 percent less than the average American woman, according to researchers. Today, models weigh about 23 percent less than the average woman. Models are also leggier than before. Usually about 5 feet 10 inches tall, they are a good five inches taller than they were 10 years ago. Meanwhile, a typical woman is about 5 feet 4 inches and weighs 155 pounds, according to a 2004 SizeUSA study. The trend is enough to make any woman feel like a hobbit in comparison to what they're seeing in magazines.

But here's the rub: thanks to technology, often not even the models themselves can compare to their portfolios. Increasingly, photos for print are enhanced and perfected to an astonishing degree. Not only are moles, acne and subtle facial hair erased from already pretty faces, but retouchers are routinely asked by editors and advertisers to enlarge eyes, trim normal-size ears, fill in hairlines, straighten teeth and lengthen the already-narrow necks, waists and legs of 18-year-old beauties. "We're always stretching the models' legs and slimming their thighs," says a photo retoucher who works for a high-end Manhattan agency. In some cases, hands, feet or even legs are replaced in photos when the subject's parts don't add up to a perfect whole. "Sometimes I feel a little like Frankenstein," says the retoucher, who would only speak anonymously because of the potential for professional backlash. The irony, she adds, is that the models and actresses pictured have usually have already been through hours of hair styling and makeup--including body makeup--to remove the slightest blemish. Yes, you heard that right, even after all of that, a 5-foot-10, 110-pound model still does not have legs that are long or skinny enough to suit some advertisers and fashion editrixes.

One might argue that photo alteration has been around for eons, but what is new is the industry shift from film to digital media about four years ago. Now it's easier, faster and more routine to clean up and "perfect" faces and figures. The doctored images are so pervasive that our eyes are perhaps becoming too accustomed to them. "The result is a culture of kids who are being socialized to unrealistic images--who need to learn to separate the real from the fabricated," says Cornell University historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg, the author of "The Body Project" (Vintage), which looks at the diaries of teenage girls from the 1820s through the 1980s. "Girls internalize this form of self- criticism and say, 'I don't look like that.' But in reality, nobody looks like that."

How do these unrealistic portrayals affect the number of people with eating disorders? It's hard to say. The statistics are notoriously difficult to track because of the shame surrounding these diseases. Experts say that sufferers are influenced by a combination of genetics and environmental triggers. But even if no one factor is to blame, for some of the 10 million women and one million men in the United States who struggle with anorexia and bulimia (and the 25 million more who suffer from binge-eating disorder), what they see in the media can, in some cases, have a pivotal impact. "Genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger--and right now the fashion industry has their finger on the trigger," says Bulik.