Wallis Simpson, the former Duchess of Windsor, once said, "You can never be too rich or too thin." And while this adage is familiar to most, if only in that tongue-in-cheek type of way, it's become the fashion world's sworn creed.
To no surprise, thin has always been "in" for this industry. Look back to the 1960s, when both the American and European fashion industries began their rapid ascensions. The "it" model and buzzed-about female of this period was none other than the aptly named "Twiggy," described by one reporter as "having the body of a starvation victim, and the face of an angel." It was she who heralded fashion's movement toward the nebulous androgyny that characterizes the majority of today's cat walkers.
Still, Twiggy's figure was most atypical, deemed beautiful by high fashion alone, not the greater public.
Then the `90s arrived, and with the decade came the phenomenon of Kate Moss -- a waif-like model with enough fashion and general audience appeal to spread "heroin chic" thinness across the globe.
From this point forward we began seeing models transform from thin, to skinny, to underweight to, most recently, even emaciated.
With each successive issue of Vogue, we were confronted with models who were thinner than those of the previous issue. And with each season's Fashion Week, reporters from New York to Milan buzzed about how bony the models had become.
This trend is so prevalent that, in 2007, it is de rigueur for fashion models to be skeletal. Furthermore, for the model to be anything but underweight is an anomaly.
And by no means is this assertion revolutionary or even shocking. Over the past year the issue of stick-thin models has pervaded all media conduits, trickling down to even the least fashion-conscious individuals. However, the extent to which the fashion industry has most recently been confronted and censured for its use of underweight models is unprecedented.
Though for years, both the media and general public have criticized designers and fashion magazines for employing models who look as though sustenance of any sort rarely passes their lips, never before have reparations been demanded.
Of course, this most recent surge of criticism follows the well-publicized deaths of three Brazilian models. The culprit in each case: anorexia.
Since these young girls' deaths, a myriad of models have stepped forward, claiming that, to no surprise, there is immense pressure for figures of fashion to stay as petite as possible, often resulting in a 6-foot-tall woman who weighs in at 110 pounds or even less.
This backlash against the fashion industry has been so intense that even those models who owe their careers to the business -- such as Victoria's Secret model Tyra Banks -- have been liberal in slandering designers' and fashion houses' preference for thin models.
And though criticism continues to flow freely, and we can and have blamed everyone from the designers to the photographers to society as a whole, let us step back and consider the "purpose" of thin models.
Prior to our celebrity-saturated culture, in which models like Kate Moss and Gisele B9fndchen have become as famous as movie stars and politicians, models were nothing more than "live" mannequins. Thus, they were never intended to garner much attention from the public or the paparazzi, but rather were "designed" to display clothing. Thus, their inhuman proportions -- genetic or contrived -- suited one purpose only: to display clothing as inconspicuously as possible.
These models were, and are still in theory, intended to be robots, so to speak -- substitutes for the plaster busts and statues seen in the windows of Saks and Macy's.
However, with the rise in fascination with celebrities, everyone and anyone who graces the cover of a magazine or is featured in an advertisement becomes a topic of intrigue and fodder for the media. Thus models, too, have become celebrities.
Moreover, designer fashions have become more accessible to the public, as fashion publications have cropped up in volumes, and tabloids and newspapers have devoted entire sections to features on "The Look of Versace," or "The Top Designers of Our Day."
And as an increasing number of publications devote entire spreads to fashion photos and ads, people from all walks of life have begun to scrutinize the fashion industry and its skeletal models.
As a result, the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) has been forced to "suggest" that food be provided at Fashion Week, and that models be of a certain BMI (Body Mass Index, the quotient for measuring "healthy weight") if they are to walk in shows or pose in advertisements. These new standards, however, are only suggestions, and are not enforced in the United States as they are in Spain, where, for instance, dozens of models have been turned away from the runways for being underweight.
So with the media's unrelenting coverage and criticism of skinny models and the fashion world's questionable values, will a real change arrive?
Truth be told, I cannot imagine thinness -- even skinniness -- ever falling from grace. For one thing, our society places grave importance on aesthetics, and has an eerie fascination with the thin, as they possess some elusive, other-worldly quality that sets them apart from common-place bodies. Second, seen solely in a pragmatic light, a designer's clothing simply looks better on thin figures. This paradigm withstanding, the figure of fashion will most certainly remain a slender one.
