I have known two women who died of anorexia.
A friend who suffered, and survived, anorexia told me she was able to control very little in her life but she was able to control her weight and that is why she just stopped eating in any sensible way in her mid-teens.
To be healthy makes sense but the wraithlike figures of fashion (those "strange fancies of unreal and shadowy worlds") are an insult to ordinary people and a temptation to those who are troubled. I would not censor fashion ads -- but I would boycott those companies who use anorexic models.
PARIS—Isabelle Caro, a French actress and model whose anorexic image appeared in a shock Italian ad campaign, has died at the age of 28.
Her longtime acting instructor, Daniele Dubreuil-Prévot, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that Caro died on Nov. 17 after returning to France from a job in Tokyo.
Dubreuil-Prévot said she did not know the cause of death but that Caro "had been sick for a long time," referring to her anorexia.
Caro featured in an ad campaign by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani in 2007 for an Italian fashion house. Under the headline "No Anorexia," images across newspapers and billboards showed Caro naked, vertebrae and facial bones protruding.
Caro said she had suffered from anorexia since she was 13.
4 comments:
I have to ask whom the companies are targeting with those ads? Or who actually wears the "fashions" they display? I'm not a "big boob" guy (sorry about the vulgarity) but neither do I find flat chested waifs terribly desirable. And it's not that my tastes are important but I'm pretty average, I think, and if attractiveness is something they are marketing, aren't I the market? That said, maybe we should be leery of letting designers who don't find women attractive define what attractiveness is.
Rat,
I suspect it's got nothing to do with attractiveness to men (or women). It's more a body ideal. I recently looked at a Barbi doll and was really surprised how totally unreal her proportions were. A real woman looking like that would totally repel most men -- yet young girls play with and learn how to dress from them.
J
the whole female body age thing is very disturbing. My sister teaches grade 1 in a small town, and some of her female students weigh themselves and think they are fat. They are 6 years old. :(
oops 'image', not 'age' -- I mistyped above.
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