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ventaI don't get cross very often. The other day, however, I got really quite cross.
I'd been glancing through one of the BBC's webpage "Have Your Say" outbursts - in which the great unwashed is invited to post its opinions on a particular story. This HYS related to the news that Madrid Fashion Week is banning from its catwalks models with a BMI of less than 18[*], in attempt to fend off allegations that they're promoting poor body image/forcing models to be unnaturally thin/generally being a Bad Thing.
The news didn't make me cross. I'm aware that BMI isn't a particularly sound measure of under- or overweightedness since it doesn't distinguish between fat and muscle mass. On the BBC, the example of Maria Sharapova was much bandied about as a healthy person who has a BMI of 16 (I have no idea why so many people knew this). However, some measure towards preventing the fashion industry exerting pressure on its employees to become ever more emaciated seems like a step in the right direction.
The array of bigoted and arrogant comments didn't even make me cross. "Nobody wants to look at a fat chick in skimpy gear", "anything over a size 12 is overweight anyway", "girls, stay on a diet, please, or stay at home". I fully appreciate that these people have the right to these opinions (even if I also reserve the right to think they're twats).
The assumption that huge numbers of people leapt to - that banning underweight models would mean that the catwalks would be full of obese models - didn't so much make me cross as confuse me utterly.
What, in the end, made me stop reading in a fit of bilious frothing was the quite commonly-held belief that, given our world's rising obesity levels, women need underweight catwalkers as role-models. People who sounded like otherwise quite rational beings were citing the health problems caused by exccess weight, the dangers of pregnancy when overweight and so on and arguing that the last thing Madrid Fashion Week should be doing was "sending the message that it's OK to be fat". The very people who ought to have been applauding a move towards glamourising a healthy weight were criticising it.
Mind you, it does mean that I might take more interest in Madrid Fashion Week than I usually do, which may have been the idea all along. I'm quite curious as to which models will make it down the runway.
[*] Just in case: Body Mass Index is a means of sorting people into rough bands of "underweight", "normal", "overweight", etc. You calculate it by diving your weight (in kilos) by the square of your height (in metres). From memory, 18.5/19 is generally recognised to be about the minimum BMI you can reach before being classified as underweight. Incidentally, if you work in real money, it turns out you can use your weight in pounds and height in inches, and multiply the whole bunch by 705 and come out with about the right answer.
I'd been glancing through one of the BBC's webpage "Have Your Say" outbursts - in which the great unwashed is invited to post its opinions on a particular story. This HYS related to the news that Madrid Fashion Week is banning from its catwalks models with a BMI of less than 18[*], in attempt to fend off allegations that they're promoting poor body image/forcing models to be unnaturally thin/generally being a Bad Thing.
The news didn't make me cross. I'm aware that BMI isn't a particularly sound measure of under- or overweightedness since it doesn't distinguish between fat and muscle mass. On the BBC, the example of Maria Sharapova was much bandied about as a healthy person who has a BMI of 16 (I have no idea why so many people knew this). However, some measure towards preventing the fashion industry exerting pressure on its employees to become ever more emaciated seems like a step in the right direction.
The array of bigoted and arrogant comments didn't even make me cross. "Nobody wants to look at a fat chick in skimpy gear", "anything over a size 12 is overweight anyway", "girls, stay on a diet, please, or stay at home". I fully appreciate that these people have the right to these opinions (even if I also reserve the right to think they're twats).
The assumption that huge numbers of people leapt to - that banning underweight models would mean that the catwalks would be full of obese models - didn't so much make me cross as confuse me utterly.
What, in the end, made me stop reading in a fit of bilious frothing was the quite commonly-held belief that, given our world's rising obesity levels, women need underweight catwalkers as role-models. People who sounded like otherwise quite rational beings were citing the health problems caused by exccess weight, the dangers of pregnancy when overweight and so on and arguing that the last thing Madrid Fashion Week should be doing was "sending the message that it's OK to be fat". The very people who ought to have been applauding a move towards glamourising a healthy weight were criticising it.
Mind you, it does mean that I might take more interest in Madrid Fashion Week than I usually do, which may have been the idea all along. I'm quite curious as to which models will make it down the runway.
[*] Just in case: Body Mass Index is a means of sorting people into rough bands of "underweight", "normal", "overweight", etc. You calculate it by diving your weight (in kilos) by the square of your height (in metres). From memory, 18.5/19 is generally recognised to be about the minimum BMI you can reach before being classified as underweight. Incidentally, if you work in real money, it turns out you can use your weight in pounds and height in inches, and multiply the whole bunch by 705 and come out with about the right answer.
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Date: 2006-09-15 09:53 pm (UTC)a) First, I've abandoned all hope I ever had of rising through the Patriarchy by eventually dominating the women's fashion market.* Near as I can tell, the Patriarchy had nothing to do with it and couldn't control it if it wanted to do so. Data point one in reaching that conclusion: most models in magazines that men look at to see women with their clothes off wouldn't fit in the clothing worn by models that women read to look at women with the clothes on. (Which basically echoes Floralaetifica's point regarding the idea that fashionistas aren't looking good for men, or at least not the same subset of men.)
b) A random data point on "looking larger on screen." When I last went through the security line at Heathrow, they were checking a new device that uses some kind of imagine to "strip search" you without your having to undress. I got to see the image, which made me look pretty much like I was starkers with a strangely-floating belt-buckle floating beneath my navel.
Chatting briefly with the security guard--it takes a while for the image to form--he mentioned that one downside of the device was that because the image attempts to map a curved surface to a flat screen (and to show slightly more than your profile), you end up looking a good deal heavier. They'd received a lot of negative feedback from people who didn't mind so much the idea of people seeing them in CGI-nudity, but did mind that it made them look fat. I asked him why they just didn't modify the image as it went through the projector, and he commented that they'd tried, but between the natural addition of pounds on camera and the somewhat skewed perspective, any attempt at correction was doomed. (He added that it made people look like some British cartoon characters from before my time.)
*Use of "Patriarchy" a tongue-in-cheek joke that shows my age. I'm informed that not even academic feminists rant about this anymore.