Most French women are skinny. Yet even Paris is telling skinny models to fatten up. That’s saying a lot.
Paris bans skinny models
The fashion industry has been idolizing skinny women since the days of Twiggy. And that was the 1960s.
I’ve been decrying that idolatry since I launched this blog in 2005. Except that I hailed Madrid for declaring in 2006 that skinny models will no longer reign in Spain. Because I thought that would set a trend. It did not.
This is why, ever since then, I’ve decried
- skinny models (still) reigning in New York;
- skinny women wearing fat suits like White folks wearing Black face; and
- healthy women wearing spanx to look skinny.
New guidelines for skinny models
To be fair, the Council of Fashion Designers of America issued guidelines in 2007. Those guidelines aimed at helping fashion houses hire healthier-looking models for their shows.
It did not work. Runway models continued to look as bone thin as they were bone white (which is another of my pet peeves).
Paris bans skinny models
So I am heartened that, at long last, Paris is following Madrid’s fashion.
A law in France banning the use of unhealthily thin fashion models [which passed in 2015] has come into effect.
Models will need to provide a doctor’s certificate attesting to their overall physical health, with special regard to their body mass index (BMI) – a measure of weight in relation to height.
The health ministry says the aim is to fight eating disorders and inaccessible ideals of beauty.
(BBC, May 6, 2017)
Some men have a fetish for fat girls. I’m not one of them. I just prefer women who look more meaty like Beyoncé than skeletal like most fashion models.
And I wish the fashion industry would idolize the former rather than the latter. Because that would help girls live far healthier lives.
But don’t get me started on the pandemic of photoshopped images in all media. Those idolize skinny and surgically refined models, propagating unrealistic standards of beauty.
More to the point, they cause more body dysmorphia among girls than runway models do. This is why I’ve also decried
- women for Instagramming selfies that look nothing like themselves;
- Rolling Stone for featuring surgically-enhanced Kim Kardashian as the paragon of beauty; and
- Cosmopolitan Magazine for stoking body-image insecurities.
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Thursday, at 7:57 a.m.