Is Healthy Really Hot or is Thin Just In?

If it's really that disgusting to be bone-thin, then why are most models built like gazelles?

I guess this means Kate Moss will be out of a job (again).

In an effort to force the fashion industry to promote a 'healthy' body type, Madrid has banned the use of skinny models for their shows, using the BMI (body mass index) as a criteria for hiring women to walk the catwalk. As a result, almost one third of the models that tried out were turned away.

One might wonder if this is a senseless or responsible move on the part of organizers. I mean it's one thing to run your Dove commercials about natural body types, make love talk about love humps etc. but this is Madrid! Less is more! The show must go on! Let's see some ribs! When someone says "she's hot!" the 'average guy' would think of someone who looks like Paris Hilton (or talks like her). That's natural isn't it? Or is it?

Should the fashion industry really take the blame and the brunt of responsibility for eating disorders? Do teens and girls really look to models to be their role models, and if that drives them to having an eating disorder, is that because they have some other mental disorder? Is beauty formed by 'beautiful' models, or is it a perversion in the eye of the beholder?

Well, putting some criteria into the fashion industry to guard against illness isn't a new idea, nor is it unwarranted. Adi Barkan, an Israeli fashion photographer and model agent expressed experiencing anorexia in his clients and was consequently avalanched with calls from girls suffering from the disease. He then made the BMI a standard for his recruits and successfully legislated it in Knesset in December 2004.

Sometimes life and art come dangerously close but no one actually wears the flamboyant dresses strutted on stage. Aren't fashion shows simply that? A facade? Perhaps they are a fantasy that people believe in too strongly. People want to live the dream and get a magazine makeover, even at the expense of eating so lightly their stomach starts eating organ tissue to survive. It's too bad. I mean, if people imitate the show Jackass, wouldn't you consider them one?

Well, we are a culture of extremes. It seems that we have a weight obsession on both the light and heavy side. While about one out of five children are forecasted to be obese in North America, most tweens think being a twig is cool. Why does fashion, which is an art, have to imitate life even when it physically can't? Because life imitates fashion and we are always seeking styles that conform to our day-to-day settings yet we try to conform too much to settings on screens.

Personally, I'm unconvinced of the direct connection between what superstars say and what we do but I do think advertising has a hand to play in how we see the ideal figure. Beauty has become an artificial image, airbrushed to "perfection". So some of us give up and over-indulge. We know that our eating habits are unhealthy but we tend to overeat. What's scary is that on the other hand, eating too little is used as a tactic to lose weight instead of exercising, choosing good foods and getting lots of sleep. It stems from a psychological disorder or 'body dismorphia' where a person sees themselves as much fatter than they actually are. If that's because fashion designers portray an untrue image of what's humanly possible than I suppose that the least we can do is start promoting a healthy body type in the media the way Dove has spear-headed a campaign to do. Project a healthy medium and tolerance for different shapes. I think an attractive body type is someone like Daniela Hutchova, but she exercises for a living to be that way. Not everyone can be her. There are also a myriad of attractive body types because not one size fits all.

Let's stress comfort and self-esteem over avant-guard Nazi diet regimes. It may be up to the designers to decide on this one but perhaps they should consider reforming dress to the dimensions of reality and who's flaunting it rather than fantasy -the way past ages have gotten rid of such body-contorting devices as the corset.

Otherwise, our habits of viewing may just consume us to death.

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