Does Fashion Industry Promote Anorexia? Do Models Eat Tissue Paper To Stay Thin?

The most recent wave of criticism against anorexic-looking models was launched in 2009 with the publication of a Ralph Lauren ad campaign featuring fired model Filippa Hamilton, who was photoshopped to look exactly like these images.

The debate over fashion’s obsession with ultra-thin models has continued unabated since then, with little turning away from the down-sizing of the healthy body, original ’90s supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. Most of those size 4-6 supermodels are considered plus-size models today, compared to our typically androgynous-looking size 0 models.

Brazil’s Star Models You Are Not A Sketch Campaign

Brazilian modeling agency Star Models has recently launched an innovative eating disorder awareness campaign featuring your typical fashion sketch on the left, and models photoshopped to look like the illustration on the right. The impossibly long-legged fashionista on the left has been with us for decades. Photoshopping a real model to look like a fashion illustration is a more recent phenomenon.

Fashion insiders tell women that neither image should have any impact on our psyches. Any intelligent woman isn’t impacted by these visions of the ideal female body because we know they are only ads. The same argument applies to Barbie. Are people seriously suggesting that Barbie be banned.

Click to read more ...

Kate Upton Is Sensual Gorgeousness NYC Style for Sam Edelman by David Lipman

New York-based footwear brand Sam Edelman has hired the divine Kate Upton to front its new digital and print advertising campaign, lensed by David Lipman.

“It felt like the right time,” said Sam Edelman, designer and division president of his brand. “We had a major ad campaign with Charlotte Kemp Muhl 18 months ago. It carried us for a long time. [By choosing Kate,] it was a hell of a decision to go with an indie girl.” 

Lipman echoed that sentiment. “We chose Kate because she isn’t stick thin. She’s beautiful and all-American,” he said.

The brand went to Upton after she was photographed wearing a pair of Edelman equestrian-style boots. Both Kate and Edelman share a passion for horses, creating a bond that could go further, reports WWD. 

The campaign replaces a 2011 one — not nearly as sophisticated and of Terry Richardson vintage — with Charlotte Kemp Muhl. 

Click to read more ...

Fat Girls & Retards: Lena Dunham by Gregory Harris for Interview Magazine February 2013

A nameless reader called me a “retard” this morning for my arguments about the desexualization of women in the fashion industry’s post-90s supermodel world. I sense she’s a gal pal of that Sophia Victoria’s Secret woman — what’s her last name — who said Kate Upton would go nowhere.

Talk about having a big cheese omelette all over your face!!! Please note that — unlike dear Hannah — I didn’t attach any hurtful adjectives to my descriptions of that haute high priestess of style, but … just saying’ … 

The truth is that I don’t feel so badly being called a ‘retard’ after taking in the totality of shock jock Howard Stern’s apology to ‘Girls’ actress Lena Dunham, captured here by Gregory Harris for Interview Magazine’s February issue. Elin Svahn styles the Golden Globes winner in modern classics — including her own skin. 

E writes that last week Stern called Dunham “a little fat girl who kind of looks like Jonah Hill” before going on to detail all his other grievances. 

“I learned that this little fat chick writes the show and directs the show, and that makes sense to me because she’s such a camera hog that the other characters barely are on,” Stern complained.

“I felt bad,” he said on the air, calling the next-day take on his comments a “hatchet job,” “because I really do love the show Girls and enjoy it, and I admire the girl who writes it…So I said to [producer Gary Dell’Abate], would you please contact Lena Dunham and please tell her that I would like to explain myself to her on the air and apologize to her because I do love the show and it makes me feel bad that she is getting the impression that I somehow think she’s just a talentless little fat chick.”

Perhaps potty-mouth Hannah will decide to read all my writing and come to the majority conclusion that AOC is spot on in calling the rise of the size 0 model syndrome for exactly what it is: fashion misogyny.

This industry is too locked up in its own self-obsession to ask itself why it feels the need to eliminate curves of any kind in its models, making a universal body that looks like men’s — except for the you know what — the 21st century beauty standard for men and women. 

Exactly what’s liberating about this 21st century standard of beauty compromise? I call it saying women will look like boys — or off with our heads for raising our hands to speak in protest!! Also, dear Hannah, I heard from a most prominent designer’s PR agent a couple years ago on this topic. He threatened to sue me if I didn’t retract a statement — which only confirms that I’m getting under the skin of a few people across the pond, you included. 

Good. It’s about time American women stopped lying around like little lap dogs when the subject is taking control of our bodies — which I agree we NEED to do on a political, religious and fashion industry, let’s stoping hating our bodies and get healthy front. 

End of conversation. ~ Anne

Click to read more ...

Eva Herzigova's Clavicle Fat by Nicolas Moore for Elle France January 2013

Michele Beaurenaut styles a sensual, radiant Eva Herzigova in ‘Une Tope Solaire’, lensed by Nicolas Moore for Elle France’s January issue. Perhaps this is reverse Photoshop at work but Eva actually as a small amount — seriously, just a smidgen — of clavicle fat. Mon Dieu!!! How did this happen!

Eva’s 2010 appearance in Cannes allowed me to illustrate the downsizing of women for real, contrasting Eva 2010 (left) and Eva in the 90s (right). Helena may call me a ‘retard’ for my arguments that this is fashion misogyny at work, but the facts speak for themselves. Read The Ever-Shrinking Eva Herzigova 1992 Vogue UK & Cannes 2010

Today the yummy mummy supermodel (for real) looks healthy and still she has a big smile on her face. Bottom line, a bit of clavicle fat just isn’t the curse of death.

Let the fashion aristocracy embrace bedrock bones. The rest of us are broke anyway, so let’s face reality and celebrate a bit of bloom on the rose. Note I said “a bit” — although the news about slightly-overweight women (BMI 26-30) living longer in a study of 3 million people gives us a moment to reflect on fashion’s wisdom that being a size 0 is what we all should die to be. ~ Anne

Click to read more ...

Revisiting Filippa Hamilton & Life After Ralph Lauren with Joachim Muller Ruchholtz for Amica January 2013

Filippa Hamilton comes out fighting in Joachim Muller Ruchholtz’s editorial ‘W La Giacca’, styled by Giulia Bassi for Amica’s January issue. We share a second set of images from the same issue that are part of an interview with the model who was famously fired from Ralph Lauren in 2009 for being too fat.

The Swedish-French Hamilton didn’t go running to Twitter and broadcast her woes far and wide throughout the fashion industry. But when her story finally came to light after Ralph Lauren released extraordinaryly twisted Photoshopped images of the model in its Japan ads, that Filippa Hamilton stepped up to the plate and led an international conversation about being the fat girl size 4 in a size 0 fashion world.

We can’t say that Filippa Hamilton’s career rebounded after the Ralph Lauren debacle. But her ‘fierceness’ resulting —  not from an extraordinary ability to scowl —  but her composed, articulate response to being the subject of intense controversy brought her the respect of many people including myself. 

In the always agitated discussion of body image and unusually low BMI models, Filippa Hamilton’s voice was steady in a fashion similar to Crystal Renn’s. Any time we see Filippa in print, we say bravo! Her body led many of us to take a firm stance on the patriarchal nature of the fashion industry as it expresses itself in today’s preference for boy bodies and desexualized women. Unfortunately, Filippa Hamilton was sexy with curves.

At the end of this editorial sequence is Filippa’s 2009 story and the major essays from me that she inspired. ~ Anne

Click to read more ...

Kate Upton @ Muse Magazine, Says Gisele Is Footballer's Wife

Note | Nudity The high resolution images haven’t yet been released from Kate Upton’s Muse Magazine shoot with Sebastian Faena. The minis are available for viewing. It seems that Kate may just have that horrible Victoria’s Secret fashion show stylist Sophia Neophitou eating crow before she’s finished. Kate may be a model commoner — as Neophitou calls her — but she and Faena make sweet music with Kate channeling Marilyn Monroe for Muse Magazine.

Kate is darn quick-witted, throwing her own volley over the net against Neophitou. Despite Upton having appeared in print ads for Victoria’s Secret, Neophitou described the 5-foot-10 beauty as “like a Page 3 girl,” a reference to the British newspaper The Sun. “She’s like a footballer’s wife, with the too-blond hair and that kind of face that anyone with enough money can go out and buy.”

Upton responded: “Gisele’s a football player’s wife. Gisele’s in that category so I’m good.”

Given that Gisele is the highest-paid model in the world, making far more money than her husband, Kate rocks it with that true statement about her looking like a footballer’s wife. And just what IS wrong with Gisele? Just how did Sophia Neophitou become a spokesperson for Victoria’s Secret? I thought that was Monica Mitro’s or Ed Razek’s job.

There is so much interest in my own article about Kate Upton, perhaps because her body is one to be celebrated — as is her look.

Reflecting personally, let me share with readers that my 2Ps in a Pod column with a Catholic monk is now over. The skin care ads are down.

Why, you ask? Because a few self-appointed, very uppity people with mouths like Neophitou think that I’m a Page 3 girl, too. Too-blond hair and a slut-girl face. Decadent, disgustingly sensual — as Rick Santorum would say as he now turns to condemn sensuality, too — and a danger to humankind.

Blonds like Upton and me have no moral fiber, given our embrace of Smart Sensuality identities.

Click to read more ...