Anorexia is actually not given the respect it deserves, probably because fat people are already ridiculed, and anorexia is thought of as just an extreme extension of somebody trying to get thin. But, really, since studies show that 1 in 5 women (.doc file) suffer from some form of eating disorder, which have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness (the death rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate of ALL causes of death for girls 15-24 years old), perhaps more attention should be paid to it. (More fun facts here.)
After all, it was just last November that Isabelle Caro died, after becoming famous as the face of an Italian ad campaign for fashion label Nolita trying to combat anorexia. She died at age 28, at 5'4" and around 60 pounds.
The problem, of course, is the modern fixation on body image. A normal, healthy body is never skinny enough; more than just fat-shaming, people are constantly mocked for every point of Body Mass Index. This is not to say that we don't have an obesity issue in America; but we have a body-image issue that dwarfs it.Nobody, for example, would accuse actress and comedienne Aisha Tyler (right) of being overweight. But try to get one of her pictures into a magazine, and a horde of airbrush-wielding Photoshop geeks go to work.
(That last image stolen from here, if you're curious)
And they're proud of it. As one editor put it, without a trace of irony:
"Yes, of course we do post-production corrections on our images," SELF editor in chief Lucy Danziger told "Entertainment Tonight." "Kelly Clarkson exudes confidence, and is a great role model for women of all sizes and stages of their life. She works out and is strong and healthy, and our picture shows her confidence and beauty. She literally glows from within..."That same story goes on to quote one of many experts who are seeing the dangers of this practice.
"The more and more we use this editing, the higher and higher the bar goes. They're creating things that are physically impossible," said Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College professor of computer science who specializes in digital forensics and photo manipulation. "We're seeing really radical digital plastic surgery. It's moving towards the Barbie doll model of what a woman should look like -- big breasts, tiny waist, ridiculously long legs, elongated neck."Perhaps the problem is that health and fashion magazines are in an unhealthy universe of their own. But if they're the problem, somebody needs to find a solution.
What should enrage us all is that there was ever any question of providing treatment for anorexia. Thoughtful post NC on an issue that does not get nearly enough attention, given the number of women (and some men) who are impacted by body image issues.
ReplyDeleteYup. Thanks to Hollywood and the media, it's about 7 to 1, but there are still 1 million males in the US with eating disorders.
ReplyDeleteBut I guess when you spend all your time fat-shaming other people, it makes you feel funny to pay attention to the skinny ones, as well.
I actually like the before better than the after. I am, however, in love with all three pictures. I just think she looks so intelligent. God, she looks intelligent!
ReplyDeleteIndustry feeds on dissatisfaction. You may remember the old Billy Crystal joke from Saturday Night Live back when it was still funny: "It's better to look good than to feel good." It's not really a joke.
ReplyDeleteBut really, there are magazines that show you that your home looks like a shack, your car is a piece of crap, your wife is a frump and you? You fat slob, 98 pound weakling, too short, too tall, out of shape loser - you too can have 6 pack brains and whatever kind of lats and glutes they're selling this week, cause face it guy, you're almost at that big two-oh and that's OLD! better get on that South Beach Diet and get on your skate board, buy a bigger truck. Better wash away that gray. Better get Botox and Lipo. Better Zumba your lumbah and drink some more stimulants and rave, rave rave. . .
Our culture isn't our product. It's not our servant nor the accumulation of our wisdom. It's a malignant thing used to squeeze us dry, and there isn't one of life's wonderful freebies they can't put a price tag on.
Yes, I can't wait to hear her opinion on the Higgs Boson.
Good post Nameless. Yes, Capt., the three temptations of the Buddha: fear, desire and duty...driving us further into that place Christopher Lasch observed in The Culture of Narcissism over 30 years ago.
ReplyDeleteNameless,
ReplyDeleteA noteworthy post. I've never been a huge supporter of nature over artifice -- too much Baudelaire and other Decadent authors speaking at will inside my simple dino-noggin, I suppose -- but the photo of the model is interesting for its illumination of what is and is not reasonable by way of alteration.
On the one hand, simply retouching a person's hair a bit so it doesn't look frumpy seems fine, and so does the retouching of facial "glossiness" since, after all, photos sometimes make a person look less appealing than in real life under excellent viewing conditions. Those things don't change our sense that we are looking at a tolerably accurate representation; they only compensate for the camera's propensity to make someone look flat or "off." (I'm not quite sure why it's the case, but there seem to be lovely people who don't photograph well, and people who photograph well but aren't quite as dazzling in real life. Perhaps it's just clumsy photography, I don't know.)
On the other hand, slimming down the subject's arms, legs, and jawline seems preposterous – if the aim is to hitch a photograph to some famous woman one is interviewing, for instance, now the viewer is no longer looking at that person but instead at a glamorized, ultra-skinny, almost child-like version of a generic model or starlet.
The woman in the photo is wonderfully attractive to begin with; she doesn't need her jaw transformed and her arms and legs transformed into those of a thirteen-year-old, the latter changes perhaps a bit too consonant with some unconscious pedophile's hankering for "young'uns." That's bad artifice.
Nameless,
ReplyDeleteMany, many thanks for this post on a subject that receives too little attention and deserves far more public consciousness-raising.
Exactly what causes Anorexia nervosa? The clinical pattern suggests years of upbringing by an admonishing, badgering, and appearance-critical parent. At what point a threshold is reached where the condition turns life threatening and intractable, this is not clearly understood. But it should be emphasized where the disorder gets its start: Within the family. A multi-modal approach - medical, nutritional, and psychological – is the standard treatment model.
In France, where I resided for a number of years, underage victims of A. nervosa receive far more protection under law than here in America. Given the clinical pattern pointing to a family origin, French law requires parents of all underage victims to attend family counseling; and if parents refuse to attend, the victim becomes automatically a ward of the state.
I mentioned the French approach here because American attitudes and practices are disturbingly misguided, specifically among politicians who have introduced legislation to ban anorexic models from fashion runways. They base their assumption on skinny women serving as negatives role models for other young woman. However, this is NOT the known etiology, which, according to case studies, supports family origin as the cause, not peer role modeling.
In a sense, banning skinny women from fashion runways constitutes a form of victim blame, causing even further injury to severely compromised persons. Law must take into account the clinical evidence; sadly, bad science, no science and faulty assumptions are the way we do things here in Amerika.
Karen Carpenter, who died at age 32, is a well known example of a heartbreaking loss due to A. nervosa. Thankfully, I have several friends whose disorders have been successfully resolved.