Echo Issue Outline: copyright Echo Education Services
First published in The Echo news digest and newspaper sources index.

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Issue outline by J M McInerney

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Should the fashion industry continue to use ultra-thin models?
During Australia's Fashion Week, in May this year, a controversy developed around the use of a number of extremely thin models.
Accusations were made and denied that designers were calling for Size 6 models.
Numbers of fashion industry spokespeople condemned the supposed irresponsibility of promoting images of extreme thinness at a time when eating disorders appeared to be increasing.
Other fashion industry spokespeople defended designers' rights to determine how best to show their designs. The supposed general health of fashion models has also been stressed.

Background
There is growing international concern about what is feared to be an increasing incidence of eating disorders.
It has been claimed that anorexia nervosa (an eating disorder characterised by extremely low food intake) is being detected in children as young as ten.
It has also been estimated that some 30 per cent of Australian girls and young women were binge eaters.
It is currently not known how many of these binge eaters will progress to bulimia (an eating disorder characterised by binge eating followed by purging either as a result of self-induced vomiting or the abuse of laxatives).
Further to this it has been estimated that between 85 and 90 per cent of young women with bulimic symptoms were receiving no or inappropriate treatment.
At the same time as there has been increasing concern about an apparent increase in eating disorders within our society and how best to deal with them, there has also been concern about an apparent acceptance and perhaps promotion within the fashion industry of images of extreme thinness.
It has been claimed that there has been a trend toward the use of thinner models in recent years. This tendency is said to have been particularly apparent in Britain. The development has been associated with the popularity of models such as Kate Moss and the latest `waif' look popularised by designers such as Calvin Klein.

Arguments in favour of the fashion industry using extremely thin models
There are a number of arguments offered in favour of the fashion industry using thin models.
The first of these is that selecting a certain type of model to wear his or her designs is an aesthetic decision which the designer is entitled to make.
It may also be a legitimate commercial decision. If a designer is producing for a section of the market which typically has a certain body shape, then that designer would want his or her clothes modelled by women with an appropriate body shape.
Melbourne model, Rachel Vigor, has said, `The fact is the job requires you to be thin and in shape because designers think their clothes look better on slim people. I am a standard size 10 and sometimes that is not the look for a designer who creates specifically for a young market.'
The second argument offered is that the amount of influence which very thin models have on the eating behaviour of men and women has been exaggerated.
The director of the Austin Medical Centre's department of child, adolescent and family psychiatry, Dr Neil Coventry, has claimed that a desire to be very thin had been found among men and women since `time immemorial' and that the responsibility for it could not simply be attributed to the pressures of 20th century living or the influence of current thin super models.
`Documentation from 13th and 14th-century Europe showed there were young women who slimmed to the point of illness to prove their spiritual or religious purity,' Dr Coventry has said.
According to this line of argument, the causes of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia are a complex mixture of the psychological and the medical.
Recent research has indicated that anorexia nervosa and bulimia are not found exclusively among adolescent girls and young women obsessed with body image.
Instead, it has been claimed, people of all ages and both sexes, are showing an unhealthy desire to limit their weight.
Survey findings recently presented at a conference of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists has suggested that eating disorders can be found among middle-aged men and women with a variety of backgrounds.
The author of the survey, Dr Phillipa Hay, a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide, has stated, `Eating disorder patients may be older, heavier and less wealthy than the commonly held stereotype.'
This view suggests that the popular perception of young women and adolescent girls starving themselves in an attempt to attain the body shape of well-known fashion models does not reflect the whole picture and may not adequately account for the motivation of those with eating disorders.
Vogue publisher, Mr Stephen Quinn, has stated, `Young women who turn toward anorexia do not get the idea from magazines but from a lack of self-worth.'
Finally, it has been argued, the models themselves are being misrepresented.
A number of fashion models interviewed have claimed that they do not maintain their body weight at the expense of their health.
These models argue that they do no more than follow a sensibly balanced, if somewhat restricted, diet and that their slimness is the result of this, plus exercise and, in some cases, an unusually high metabolic rate.
Sydney model, Christy Quilliam, (a picture of whom, emphasising her protruding ribs, helped to spark the recent controversy) has stated, `It's true. It is true. I mean, all my life all my friends have always hated me because I'd sit down and eat a huge meal and a block of chocolate and still be skinny.'
Ms Quilliam went on to attribute her ultra-thinness to a high metabolic rate.
Similarly, Melbourne model, Rachel Vigor, has said, `I don't restrict what I eat so much as the quantity of it. You have to remind yourself that this is how you make your living. So if you become obsessed with not eating, you put yourself at risk of becoming ill and not being able to work.'

Arguments against the fashion industry using extremely thin models
The principal argument offered against the fashion industry employing extremely thin models is that to do so may risk the health of the community at large.
According to this line of argument, fashion models help to shape popular conceptions of what constitutes an attractive and desirable body shape.
If this is the case, it is argued, then promoting the image of models who range from a size six to a size ten encourages people to dramatically limit their food intake in an attempt to obtain what they believe is an acceptable body size and shape.
Ms Thea O'Connor, a spokesperson for Latrobe University's Body Image and Health Program, has claimed that images promoted by the fashion industry and the media were one significant reason why girls wanted to lose weight.
According to this line of argument there is a mismatch between the images of supposed perfection or beauty being popularly promoted and the dimensions of most Australian men and women. Herald Sun columnist, Evelyn Tsitas, has claimed that `most Australian women actually wear a Size 14.'
Further to this, it has been claimed, that popular images of extreme thinness serve to create unrealistic body shape expectations in all people, even those who are themselves naturally thin.
Thus, Ms Thea O'Connor has stated, `The desire to be thin is prevalent across all weight categories, including normal weight people and those under weight.'
It has been suggested that in an attempt to achieve what they believe to be desirable body proportions, many people resort to extreme measures including extreme food limitation (anorexia nervosa) and binge eating and then purging (bulimia).
It has been estimated that within Australia one in five female tertiary students suffers with bulimia.
The supposed link between fashionable images and eating disorders such as bulimia has been bluntly stated by Herald Sun columnist, Evelyn Tsitas.
`The only way 99.95 per cent of women over ten can achieve a Size 6 look is to stick their fingers down their throat after each meal,' Ms Evelyn Tsitas has claimed.
The same point was made in a more restrained manner by Mr Giles Rees, director of Omega, the company which threatened to remove its advertising from British Vogue as a protest against that magazine publishing photographs of extremely thin models.
`At a time when an increasing number of young women, and men too, are suffering from so-called slimmers' diseases, these types of articles (illustrated by photographs of ultra-thin models) are incredibly irresponsible and can only exert a negative influence and encourage weight loss to the extreme,' Mr Rees has said.
Secondly, it has been argued that not only is the fashion industry encouraging unhealthy eating patterns, it is also promoting illegal drug use.
Modelling spokesperson, Miss Dally-Watkins has claimed that current fashion images promote not only the anorexic look, they also promote the heroin-user look.
`On the catwalk, it is cool, chic and fashionable to look like a drug-addict and anorexic and I think that is terribly, terribly sad,' Miss Dally-Watkins has said.
Finally, it has been argued that fashion designers do not have an automatic `artistic' right to promote unhealthy images in the name of fashion.
Herald Sun columnist, Evelyn Tsitas, has claimed, `[Fashion designers] couldn't design a directional and flattering outfit for a real woman's body if you held a gun to their head.'
According to Ms Tsitas, the fantasy images being promoted by many designers are the result of a combination of design incompetence and a failure to respect the real human form.
According to critics many current fashion designs are potentially damaging aberrations and fashion designers should not be encouraged to continue in this manner.

Further implications
Currently, fashion designers are able to determine the type of model who will wear their designs in major fashion parades.
Similarly magazines and other media outlets are able to publish images of whatever type of female form is regarded as fashionable.
However, this may not remain the case.
Later this year, the New South Wales Government will convene a special summit to examine an apparent increase in health problems in young men and women, associated with dieting in an attempt to achieve an unrealistic body shape.
One of the results of this summit may be a code of practice regulating the images of the female form the media promotes through magazines and other outlets.
Already there have been informal moves by some prominent advertisers to influence the images magazines present.
Watchmaker, Omega, announced it would withdraw its advertising from Vogue magazine in protest over the use of models with a supposedly anorexic appearance, in the Vogue June edition.
Omega's brand director in Great Britain, Mr Giles Rees, described the lingerie and beachwear photographs as `extremely distasteful' and `incredibly irresponsible'.
However, the day after Omega had announced it would withdraw its advertising from British Vogue, the company reversed its decision.
Omega chairman, Mr Nicholas Hayek, issued a statement which concluded, `It is not in anybody's interest to influence the editorial position of any given magazine.'
Mr Stephen Quinn, Vogue's publisher, stated, `It (the return of Omega's advertising) is good news in terms of editorial independence.'
The issue appears to have become one centring on freedom of speech or freedom of the press, rather than one focussing on what images of the human body it was appropriate to promote.
It seems likely, however, that if conferences such as the one soon to be held in New South Wales manage to link popular images of ultra-thin women with eating disorders in the general community then there is likely to be increasing pressure placed on the fashion and advertising industries as a whole to modify the images they present.

Sources

The Age
1/6/96 page 16 news item, `Vogue loses advertising over ultra-thin models'
5/6/96 page 21 analysis by John Darnton, `Ultra-thin models still in vogue'

The Australian
5/6/96 page 5 news item by David Nason, `Skinny fashion fad sparks health summit'

The Herald Sun
15/5/96 page 5 news item, `"Skeletons" spark a fashion furore'
16/5/96 page 3 news item, `I'm just naturally skinny, says model'
17/5/96 page 3 news item, `Model vigorously defends her trade'
17/5/96 page 14 news item by Felicity Allen and Nicola Webber, `Epidemic blame on designers'
17/5/96 page 18 editorial, `A model of stupidity'
17/5/96 page 19 opinion by Evelyn Tsitas, `So simple to look so sick'
19/5/96 page 10 news item by Sue Hewitt, `Working models, but they're the real thing'
20/5/96 page 6 news item by Melissa Sweet, `Food-bingers fail to fit stereotype, says new survey'
23/5/96 page 2 news item by Steve Dow, `Ever-younger girls join culture of thinness'
1/6/96 page 9 news item by Sarah Dolan and Liz Deegan, `Watch firm ticks off models of anorexia'
3/6/96 page 3 news item by Ed Gannon, `Danger: an image to Di for'
4/6/96 page 7 news item by Jane Willson, `Designer attacks stick-insect models'
4/6/96 page 7 news item, `Junkie fashion attack'

What they said:
`The fact is the job requires you to be thin and in shape because designers think their clothes look better on slim people. I am a standard size 10 and sometimes that is not the look for a designer who creates specifically for a young market'
Melbourne model, Rachel Vigor

`At a time when an increasing number of young women, and men too, are suffering from so-called slimmers' diseases, these types of articles (illustrated by photographs of ultra-thin models) are incredibly irresponsible and can only exert a negative influence and encourage weight loss to the extreme'
Mr Giles Rees, Omega's brand director