From a young age, girls are bombarded with images of the ideal body and beauty standards. Celebrity role models and childhood toys contribute to the belief — Barbie is just one toy that has been scrutinized for giving younger girls a wrong impression of the standard woman and what it means to be beautiful.
As those girls get older, self-consciousness about their bodies only gets stronger, and self-esteem lowers. Beauty standards affect not only those within the fashion and beauty industries, but also everyone who stays up-to-date on current trends. However, models usually receive most of the pressure to stay stick thin.
The International Journal of Eating Disorders recently released a study creating a definitive link between models and the prevalence of eating disorders, according to a BuzzFeed article published on Wednesday. The study is the first scientific proof that models are pressured by the industry to take extreme measures for weight loss, including forming an eating disorder, drug addiction or starving their bodies of nourishment.
The study revealed that of the group of models who participated, 81 percent had body mass indexes that classified as underweight. More than half of the group admitted that they were pressured to lose weight, otherwise they will run the risk of not able to book any jobs.
The fashion industry has set extremely rigid standards of beauty that a surplus of people ‒ both men and women — willingly meet to enter and thrive in the profession. This study’s results aren’t surprising because their bodies alone are proof that many models are too skinny to live a healthy lifestyle. In most professions, employees are making or selling a product. In the modeling world, you are the product. There is a lot of pressure to upkeep your body and stay in line with the industry’s current ideal body image. Unfortunately, models who have eating disorders or who refuse to eat days before a photoshoot aren’t that hard to come by.
Models shouldn’t have to choose between being a comfortable weight and fitting into the standards of the industry. Your body is your body, and you shouldn’t force it to be something that it physically cannot be or isn’t comfortable with. Who are models trying to please, anyway? When people think that being beautiful means you have to be skinny, who wants that? The term “beauty” itself implies that you’re trying to please someone else. Models try to shape their bodies into a universally accepted form that inevitably rubs off on younger girls, who then start to believe that being a size 0 is the social norm. The average woman is a size 16 in pants. She’s not even close to Barbie and she doesn’t have a BMI under two digits. We shouldn’t want models to represent the image of a woman who isn’t evident in our society.
That being said, body positivity is at an all-time high. Ashley Graham, who has been given a lot of media attention recently for being a plus-size model, was the first plus-size model to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Not everyone believes that female models or women in general have to be a size 0 anymore to be beautiful. It’s still a huge problem that there is so much pressure to be a certain size but there have been efforts made to shy away from shaming women for having a bit of fat on their body. Brands like Aerie and ModCloth have pledged not to Photoshop their models to prove that a natural body is a beautiful body. This study is illuminating that we don’t know exactly what struggles models face in their profession and that the only way to end this stigma is to offer jobs to women that are size 8 or higher and encourage their pursuit of fame in the fashion and beauty industries.
What does “plus-size” even mean? If you’re a model, you’re a model. It doesn’t matter what kind, shape or size you are. And those who are plus-size are honestly average by American standards. The stigma exists that it is shameful to weigh any more than unnaturally skinny, but it shouldn’t be that way. There shouldn’t be exclusively plus-sized or size 0 models. Where are the women who represent the average female? The extremes set by this industry are setting the precedent that weight determines beauty, that there are different kinds of beauty and that one is certainly better than the other.
Though mass fashion is making strides to eliminate nearly impossible beauty standards, it seems as though high fashion is still expecting their models to hold extremely low BMIs. High fashion isn’t just about people buying their products anymore — it has become an art form. Fashion shows want stick thin women to display their clothing because a relatively curvier woman may ruin the image they’ve created. It isn’t even about the people anymore. Why can’t the industry change their values to embrace women that accurately reflect society?
