French government forming international body to investigate skinny model phenom

Bravo, mes amis!  Et en fin!

News reports out today say that the French fashion federation is now agreeing that the skinny model prob needs to investigated. BUT, Didier Grumbach, the "chief" of the federation is still maintaining that more regulation IS NOT in order... it's "the education of young women."

Yeah... um well... I see where he's coming from.  And I'm not the type of person who generally wants to start regulating everything either, but the problem with putting the onus on young women to get educated is that it puts the onus on young women to get educated--and we (as a global culture) don't really spend a lot of time, effort, or money on helping girls decode the images they see.  In other words, I agree that we need to give girls the tools to make sense of media images etc, but I also think that designers, photographers, PEOPLE IN GENERAL should do their part in wanting to create healthy images.   So it's not like they get to put out whatever they want, and then educators (like me?) and girls need to scramble to understand and save themselves.

My other fave part of the news report:

"France's health minister has said he wants a working group to assess the impact that images of skinny models have on young women."

Hmmm.... gee. How are they going to do that? I mean, as we've all been talking about on this Skinny Model thread it's not a simple direct correlation ie Skinny Models On Paris Runway= Specific Number of New Cases of Anorexia Per Year. In my opinion, the images and messages created by parading these models down a runway and paying them big fat salaries (way bigger than say a high school teacher or a computer technician...jobs that require actual skills and talents) contribute to a larger message about which qualities in women are valuable and worth compensating. And THAT'S where the problem lies.   

So how do you quantify how much a photo of a skinny model on the runway actually influences a girl? Again in my opinion, you'd need to talk to every girl out there, to decode how she feels about herself when looking at media images, find out how much she understands about how those images get created, THEN determine if she has positive role models, influences and activities in her life that help offset all the messages she's getting regarding the importance of thinness, fame, beauty etc....

Wait a minute.  That sounds a lot like my job.  Alors les francais, if you're looking for an American expert on this topic then call me up! Je suis disponible et je parle francais!

Comments

[emm]

It has been in my mind for ages that if fashion designers want skinny models with no hips or chests, why not just use skinny male transvestites? The fashion world is so far removed from reality that using female impersonators instead of real women could hardly remove it much further. Then they could go on with the whole sorry fashion sideshow and the rest of us could ignore it and concentrate on worthwhile things instead.

And another thing--what's the point of being paid millions of dollars per movie or for being a model if you can't spend any of it on food and you end up looking hollow-eyed, gaunt, and miserable?

[AJ Foster]

I think that fat girls should protest fashion shows that promote skinny women. For every hour of protest, they could burn 300 calories. And If they raise their arms and shout slogans, they could loose an additional 100 calories. Important to remember - cut the feed bag from your face!