Why Does the Fashion Industry Harm Women's Health?
Is Fashion The Main Cause Of Anorexia And Bulimia?
Why do modern day cat-walk models look so weird? They do not look like the average women, because they are extremely skinny and very tall. The excuse for this, is that clothes look better on these types of women.
This makes no sense whatsoever, because these clothes still have to be worn by normal looking women. So how can the average women get any sense of what these clothes look like on them, when they see them being worn by models, so very different then the average women?
The problem could be, is that the fashion industry is dominated by homosexual men and heterosexual women, and both of these types of people do not seem to appreciate feminine beauty. The ideal masculine shape, appreciated by heterosexual women, is a person with wide shoulders going down to slim hips and a small bottom. While the ideal feminine shape appreciated by most heterosexual men, is an hourglass figure with wide hips, large bottom and large breasts.
So it seems that the homosexual male and heterosexual female fashion designers, do not see the feminine figure as looking beautiful. They much prefer the masculine figure. This is why modern day cat-walk models are trying to look like men. The problem is that if a woman tries to emulate a male figure with wide shoulders, slim hips and small bottom, although she cannot grow wide shoulders, she can, slim right down so that she has no fat on her hips and bottom
Positive Images for Women.
The consequence of that is, the rest of her body is also slimmed down, so she ends up being a very skinny person
Fashion designers also tend to pick very tall models, again for the same reasons and that is men are generally taller than women, and so fashion models are as tall, or even taller, than the average man.
If this was only a fashion quirk, this wouldn't be a problem, but people are actually dying because of this crazy fashion. The slimming diseases anorexia and bulimia rank as the third most common chronic illness in adolescent females. Some are actually starving themselves to death, and even those who don’t do this, the terrible effects on a person’s health through starvation, can still kill them. The fashion models themselves are not immune from this either, as many of them have also died of these slimming diseases
Unfortunately, the fashion industry accepts no responsibility for this, and continues to promote extremely thin models on the cat-walk and in fashion magazines. Some heterosexual men also do not help either, because many men think it is funny that their normal size girlfriends or wives are paranoia about their weight or the size of their bottoms, and think that telling a woman, “you’re too fat”, is a joke. Other men also use it as a means of punishing women if they are not getting what they want from them. Or even use it as a weapon to undermine women’s confidence, and gain power over them. This is because a unconfident women is less likely to challenge the behaviour of the man she is living with
Some men are also affected by this fashion, as 1 in 7 of the people suffering from slimming diseases are men. Other men have been brainwashed into thinking very skinny women are beautiful. It is ironic that a woman like Marilyn Monroe and film-star of the 1950s who then was then seen as having the perfect figure, would be now be seen by many, as too fat
Fortunately, it is not all bad news. On British TV, the fashion expert, Gok Wan, has set out to give normal size women, confidence that they are beautiful, in his popular shows, How to look Good Naked. For this he needs to be greatly commended. So at least some people in the fashion industry are willing to try to repair the harm, of what they are doing to women
In 2011, the fifty year old, TV presenter and maths wizard, Carol Voderman was voted, “Rear of the year”, beating the younger and slimmer, odds on favourite, Pippa Middleton, (sister of the Duchess of Cambridge), for the title. For normal heterosexual men, it is obvious to me why Carol Voderman won the title, but many in the media were shocked by the large number of men who voted for her. This suggests that the fashion media has totally lost touch with what ordinary men think of as beautiful in women.
Although a competition like, Rear of the year”, is just a bit of fun, it is still very influential in how women think of themselves. As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, this known by the advertising industry. They know that images are far more influential than any other communication medium, over the minds of people.
It is unfortunate that ordinary heterosexual men no longer have a say in what they perceive as beautiful in the fashion industry. To make it worse, men’s views on female beauty has been given a bad press, because men like to see beautiful women in Men’s magazines. Unfortunately, most women seem to think these magazines are very crass, crude and demeaning to women. This is why the views of a homosexual fashion guru like Gok Wan have far more influence on women, than the views of ordinary heterosexual men.
Are women trying to look like Men?
Another problem is that the feminine is seen as being ‘weak’ in our patriarchal world. Women are taught that if they want to get ahead in our world, then they have to learn to be as aggressive and competitive as men. This is reflected in the fashion of, “power dressing” where a woman wear shoulder pads to make it look like she had wide muscular shoulders, and very high heel shoes so she looks as tall as a man
So there is a strong feminist influence in modern women’s fashion where women want to feel empowered, but the underlining message is that they have to act and even look like men, to do this. So this also has to do with issues about feminine power. That is to say, how women can feel empowered but remain feminine. This is why Carol Vorderman is a good role model for women, as she looks feminine but also is very successful and is famous for her intelligence
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Read 'New beauty secret revealed: Fotoshop by Adobé' on Yahoo! Lifestyle UK. Have you ever seen a beauty advert that was so unrealistic it made you want to laugh?
- "Say No to Size Zero:" How Judging Thin Women Doesn't Promote Body Acceptance | xo
Lashing out at thin women to tell them they aren’t wanted isn’t the way to address disparities and prejudices in fashion.
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Banana Girl
- Former Vogue editor: The truth about size zero | Fashion | The Guardian
The fashion industry is not a pretty business. Here, one of its own, the former editor of Australian Vogue Kirstie Clements describes a thin-obsessed culture in which starving models eat tissues
- In France, you can now be jailed for employing extremely thin models – Quartz
The French parliament has passed a measure that bans modeling agencies and fashion brands from employing models the government deems too thin. Now models will be required to present medical documentation of a body mass index (BMI) of at least 18, Reu
Ex model writes a book on what it is like to be a 'supermodel'.
© 2011 William Bond