http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS2mfWDryPE
A few years ago, the fashion industry was targeted for becoming a culture in which the extremely thin women where idealized and glorified...thin was never thin enough. As Susan Bordo wrote, "female bodies become docile bodies-bodies whose forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection, transformation, 'improvement' " What Bordo wrote really jumped out to me and screamed 'This is what's wrong with girls today!" It was a relief to me that someone in the extremely influential fashion industry took a strong position and said, it's not okay for unhealthy bodies to be the most valued bodies. But why did it take Isabelle's nude skeleton-like body plastered over billboards for someone to step in?
Growing up my older sister continuously struggled with Anorexia so my position on weight was influenced by the negative, ugly side of staying thin that I saw every day. Intertexuality played an important role in the way I personally view images and experiences of the feminine body.
I love fashion; my dressers and closet are bursting at the seams and I have too many shoes to count. I devour my monthly subscription to InStyle within hours of it landing in my mailbox. However, when I see models on the runway or posing for a ad campaign I don't automatically see new fall fashions or her great eye makeup. Instead, I see her collar bone sticking too far out, her sunken cheeks, and her rail thin arms. This is because I associate the thin female body with starving yourself, and then suffering the consequences, which to that culture are ideal.
Perhaps I am too engrossed in my own culture seeing my sister exercise for hours and never eating so I link any kind of extreme thinness with a fearful, unhealthy stigma. But it is the way I see the world given my past experiences so I couldn't be more overjoyed when the fashion industry made an effort to use the docile female body to make a positive change.
It breaks my heart to see overly thin models and as you said, I too have had someone in my family struggle with an eating disorder. It's a mental illness that destroys both the body and the person inside it. People always say, "We'll if they just start eating, then they would be ok". This is really not the case. It's a whole process of time and energy that go into helping a person heal from this desease. I'm glad that the fashion industry is able to start moving towards healthier bodies but it's shouldn't have taken them so long.
ReplyDeleteI have several friends who have a relative that struggles with anorexia and it changes the way you look at things even if its not you with the disease. Sort of like how you view the magazines but you see the collar bones sticking out and the skeletal girls rather then the fashion aspect of it. It is sad that this model in the video had anorexia since she was 13.. It's ruining the teenage population.
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