Eating Disorders Blog

Montreal-based fashion designer Katrin Leblond, reports that it is still difficult to find healthier-sized models in Montreal, and she believes additional efforts are required.

"There's no centralized industry, there's no centralized monitoring of modeling agencies," Leblond said in a March 10 article by Andrea Hayley of The Epoc Times. "Most of the agencies couldn't even provide me with a choice of more than one or two girls of that size."

According to the Quebec Association for Assistance to People Suffering from Anorexia and Bulimia, as many as 65,000 women in the province struggle with disordered eating behaviors, The Epoc Times reported. The extreme thinness of fashion models is believed to be one of the media influences that contributing to the prevalence of eating disorders.

Labels: media, model, fashion

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Former runway model Inga Radziejewski is speaking out about the deadly standards of high fashion. At her thinnest, 5'11" tall Inga weighed just 98 pounds and was still rejected from a fashion audition for being too fat.

At the time, Inga was so skinny that she was just weeks away from complete organ failure due to anorexia. She was subsisting on half an apple a day and peppermint tea with brown sugar. Her body mass index was only 14 (anything under 18.5 is considered underweight, according to the World Health Organization). Inga also heard other models regularly discuss their extreme methods for staying rail thin.

She explained, "I heard one girl say that she started throwing up her food three days before a casting and another said she was taking epilepsy medication to help her concentrate because she was so ­delirious from hunger. When I looked shocked all the other girls said they did it too."

Inga says that although models were often friends with each other, there was definitely a sense of rivalry, and ever-present pressure from designers and photographers to measure up to an impossible standard. Even at size 00, Inga feared she would be passed over at auditions for being too big.

She said, "It was very competitive and I ­dreaded being bigger than the girl next to me. We were all friends but there was ­definitely a rivalry between agencies. If you didn't fit in your clothes they would be taken from you and given to another girl. I was so scared of losing out at castings, I would starve myself."

Inga finally received eating disorder treatment after she agreed to go home and see her parents. Her parents, who saw a photograph of their daughter and became alarmed, begged her to come home for a visit. While home, she agreed to receive outpatient eating disorder treatment at a local clinic. However, when the doctors at the clinic examined her they informed her that she was probably days away from total organ failure and said that they would not let her leave until she began to recover.

Inga says even at that time she didn't see anything wrong with her habits. She looked at other patients at the clinic who were recovering and thought of them as "fat cows," while she was envious of those patients who were even skinnier than she was.

After going through eating disorder treatment, Inga now has a healthy BMI of 20 and weighs about 149 pounds. She is working as a model in mainstream fashion, and has come to terms with leaving the world of high fashion.

"I know that my career in high fashion is now over and part of me is sad about that, but if I hadn't gone into rehab, the cost would have been a lot higher. I could have died," she said.

(Source: www.mirror.co.uk)

Labels: eating disorder, anorexia, media, fashion

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A recent poll of teenage girls shows that nine out of 10 feel pressured to be skinny by the fashion and media industries, and that an unattainable image of female beauty is perpetuated by these industries.

The poll, which included responses from 1,000 teenage girls between the ages of 13 and 17, was conducted for Girl Scouts USA by the youth research firm TRU. More than 75 percent of respondents said that fashion is "really important" to them.

Kimberlee Salmond, a senior researcher at the Girl Scout Research Institute, commented on the poll's findings: "The fashion industry remains a powerful influence on girls and the way they view themselves and their bodies. Teenage girls take cues about how they should look from models they see in fashion magazines and on TV and it is something that they struggle to reconcile with when they look at themselves in the mirror."

More than 80 percent of respondents said that they would rather see natural photos of models rather than digitally altered or enhanced photos. In addition, more than 75 percent of girls said they would be more likely to buy clothes that they see worn by real-size models than clothes that they see on ultra-thin models.

A significant percentage of respondents also reported experiencing or witnessing disordered eating behaviors. One in three respondents reported refusing to eat in an effort to lose weight; about half said they knew someone their age who has vomited after eating to lose weight; and more than one-third said they know someone who has been diagnosed with an eating disorder.
Aside from celebrities and models, respondents reported that peers, friends and parents are the top influences with regard to body image.

(Source: www.reuters.com)

Labels: eating disorder, body image, media, fashion, teen

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As public opinion continues to shift away from the size-zero standard of beauty, a teenager from Glasgow is helping solidify that opinion. At a healthy size 12, Angelica Gray has no shortage of offers from modeling agencies in Australia, Belgium, London and America.

“Ms Gray is just the latest model to buck the size-zero trend in what many believe is a growing section of the fashion world. The average dress size a UK woman is 16. The average model is a size six… Victoria Allison, model booker at Model Team, Ms Gray’s Glasgow-based agency, said: ‘The market does seem to be changing. Girls like Angelica are proving that curvier models can be just as beautiful as a slimmer model and can work equally well in high-fashion clothing.’” (Source: The Sunday Herald)

Though curvier models are being more widely accepted, Dr. Alex Yellowlees, who treats women struggling with eating disorders, says there’s still a problem. The curvier models are often referred to as “plus-size,” even though they’re not at all overweight. Accepting size-12 models is a start, but the practice of labeling them “plus-size” needs to stop.
 

Labels: media, model, fashion

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 0 Comments

British mannequin maker Rootstein has churned up the “thin” debate with announcement of his latest creations; including a male mannequin whose waist in 11 inches smaller than that of the average Briton.

“BEAT chief executive and eating disorder expert Susan Ringwood told Reuters that skinny male mannequins in shop windows can have just as unhealthy an influence on men as their female counterparts have on women.” [Source: Reuters]

Though they’ve been overlooked in the past, males with eating disorders are finally starting to get some much-needed attention. Official statistics about men with eating disorders indicate that about 1 percent of the population is affected by these disorders, as well as poor body image, and unhealthy levels of physical activity. Many experts believe the number is likely much higher.

 

Labels: media, fashion, men, influences

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The Girl Guides of Great Britain -- the British equivalent of the Girl Scouts -- are calling for "warning labels" on pictures of models and actresses that have been manipulated in order to make the subjects appear slimmer.

The Guides want help people recognize the difference between natural and "photoshopped" images of women, noting that girls as young as ten years old worry about their weight, and 50 percent of people ages 13 to 19 years old would consider having cosmetic surgery.

Digital photo manipulation has been criticized for its negative impact on self-image and self-esteem, as well as for contributing to the development of eating disorders among those who are unduly influenced by these images.
 

Labels: media, model, fashion

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The world is alive with Fashion Weeks. From London to Milan to New York, designers, spectators and critics are lining runways populated with models. This year, a handful of “curvy” models have been added to a handful of shows, and report Laurie Penny thinks the fanfare is premature.

“In this context, getting excited about the ‘return’ of curves is just one more way of obsessively scrutinizing women’s bodies, fetishising female flesh and particularly female fat as somehow shock, abnormal, edgy. Female fat is not edgy. It’s not an unusual fashion trend. It’s everyday reality for over three billion human beings on this planet.” - Source: New Statesman

Laurie is particularly sensitive to how women are portrayed, because she struggled with an eating disorder for five years. She overcame it with the help of friends, family and therapy, but is still acutely aware of how narrowly “beauty” is defined in the fashion industry. “Curves” aren’t a victory, they’re normal. And they, and the women who have them, should be treated that way.

 

Labels: media, model, fashion

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