2006 8
Too Thin to be a Model
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
El País, Spain’s leading newspaper, has an interesting article today that tells the story of how the largest fashion show in Spain, Pasarela Cibeles, is not allowing extremely thin models on the cat walk.
In Spain, as in many other countries, there is a concern that very thin models and their look are responsible for many women of average weight becoming anorexic. So what the managers of Pasarela Cibeles did is hire a group of nutrition experts who recommended that models whose body mass index is lower than 18 cannot go on the runway. Body mass index is your weight in kilos divided by the square of your height in meters.
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Galleguayo on September 9, 2006 ·
Esta noticia sería más válida si no conociéramos que España se postula a la Presidencia de la OMS. Pero bueno, algo es algo, por algún lado había que empezar.
En mi País se murió una modelo en plena pasarela, por tratar de llegar a cánones de belleza establecidos por los más importantes centros de diseño (Milán, París, Barcelona…)
Este problema, ya es un problema mundial, gracias a la globalización, por eso la OMS debería tomar debida nota de lo que aquí se está intentando hacer, pero hay que atacar a la raíz, a los diseñadores y a la publicidad que estos realizan.
Algún control que advierta (sobre todo a las jóvenes), que tratar de llegar a unas medidas para ponerse tal o cual prenda, puede causar severos transtornos en su alimentación y graves daños a su salud.
Pero la pregunta queda hecha, ¿se revisan ahora estos temas tímidamente, para acceder a cargos políticos internacionales?, ¿o se hace por verdadero compromiso social y humano?.
Un abrazo.
Phil on September 13, 2006 ·
No government should get involved in the management of cultural imagery. This carries us to the realm of dangerous relativity, and who knows what the government will decide to regulate next.
We see imagery on a daily basis that is more dangerous to society than skinny models. A better solution is to make sure that the educational system gives young people the analytical tools in order to “not buy into the hype.”
People should learn to think and be responsoible–why should the goverment do that for them?
deborah on September 23, 2006 ·
I would like to disagree with the previous comment. BMI goes beyong “cultural imagery” and has to do with public health, mental and physical, and it is the responsibility of the government to provide as much information and regulate accordingly, not only towards individuals but in increasing accountability of corporations in this realm.
This initiative however is only a first step in what should be broader public health policy that includese as well, as the previous post mentions, education.
As it was said before, given the transborder reach of images and information public health policies need to tailored at the multilateral level to be more effective.
Regards and thanks for the posting, although Martin did not give his point of view on this.
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XL on September 9, 2006 ·
In fact I think it’s not pasarela Cibeles is the spanish law that forbide that, the law was done on 1990 but nobody has aplicated, but finally the goverment decided to act, because 30% of the models of last year didn’t respect this criteria.
I’m agree with the spirit of the law, but I think is a mistake that the spanish goverment act alone,because is a disaventage for spanish designers… now his designs seems not adequated, or not to cool…
I think that the solution of the goverment should be push to develop an european law that afects all the countris, because in that case the efficacity will higher, and spanish designers won’t be in disadventage.
I think that if you see an advertaisment of an European designer you see bones skin and dress, but if you see an advice of Ralph Lauren, Tommy or other american designers, you see more nice and health people…