Are Models to Skinny? The debate fashion has been having since 1900

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jan/16/-sp-are-models-too-skinny-the-debate-fashion-has-been-having-since-1900

• This is an article I found online about models and how they are too small and don’t represent everyone. Research. 
• Models and their body size have been something that people have been debating for more than a century, and the argument that exists saying that this is something that affects people’s body image is just as old and prevalent. 
• When the industry took shape, models were called “living mannequins” because they were used as displays in different formats. They were looked at as “animated dolls.” At the time, they were expected to look and act the same, which led to a lot of judgment. “One critic in 1910 described their ‘industrial smiles’” I think this is really hard to judge specifically because this was at a time when women did not have a lot of rights and jobs were very limited, so it was actually a power move that they were able to get this job and make some money for themselves. Hence, I think it is really hard to make these kinds of judgments against these women. However, they took away a lot of their power and autonomy because they were not able to speak unless spoken to, and they would not even have their own identity; their identity would be the one with the name of the dress, which completely stripped them. So while we can’t judge them, we can critique the way they were treated as moving objects. 
• One of the main things to look at is that in the 1900s, women stopped wearing corsets all the time, and they were all slender. Still, none of them reached the level of extreme thinness we see today, but it started changing rapidly as more people got involved in dance and sport. Looking at the dates, I think it might have been when flappers started to appear and began showing their legs and arms. The same problems we see now were also present back then: “Then as now, both journalists and the public complained that models bore no relation to ordinary women.” This is the same critique we see today, which shows this isn’t just something we see now; it started when the industry gained more visibility and models became more common. 
• There was also talk about Arjmand, who was publicized as the thinnest model in the world, and people were scared she was going to break from how thin she was; however, this is not something she, as a model, ever liked. She was always on diets to try to gain weight but was always thin. I think we have to look at this closely because people are criticized for being too thin every day. We see it on a daily basis. I am in no way comparing it to the discrimination that people in bigger bodies face because there is no comparison, and being criticized and being discriminated against are very different things, but being extremely thin is something some people cannot control. I have spoken to people who say that they feel as if they are a part of the problem with fat phobia and the media because they are thin, when in reality there is very little they can actually do about this. It is important to understand this, but also to understand that these are not comparable things. 
• There were also geographical ways to see differences. For example, the fact that in the 1920’s in NYC, the uptown people, which I am guessing are the richest people based on the geography of NYC today, the models were a lot thinner. In contrast, in the southern part of the city, they were more full-figured, and I can even connect this to today because in South American countries, when people are of a lower socioeconomic status, they want to be more full-figured to show they eat and have money for food. Still, people with a higher socioeconomic background often want to be thinner. At the beginning of the use of models, there were a variety of sizes; however, when there started to be more movement and there started to be more standardization, I imagine that this was something that was done as a part of the industry to make things easier for themselves; however, not keeping in mind that they were excluding other people that should be included in conversations and as a part of the industry. 
• “In Paris, Coco Chanel chose models in her own, slender, image, even fitting the fuller-figured ones with a whale-boned brassiere to flatten their bosoms.” This makes me think about ethics and research because, when she was doing this, she thought of herself as the stakeholder and made the product for herself or the form in which she thought the look should be. Still, research and products should never be only for ourselves. It is really interesting how she even went about changing people’s bodies to make sure that they looked the way she intended the clothing to be worn; however, this goes against one of the main principles that I have been researching, which is that you should not change your body to fit a garment but to change the garment. An example I can show you today is about how people have their “skinny jeans or clothing,” and this is for when they reach their goal, and this is replicating this same idea of changing one’s body to fit into an industry standard. 
• This was the trend of having models be “boyish form is passé,” which is that the women that looked less developed or did not have a lot of curves were no longer the beauty standard, which shows us how bodies are now trends that need to be followed and are set by the media industry. Even though this was the standard for so long, there was a story in the press where 200 women lost their jobs for being too thin. This makes me think about the expectation that women fit a thin ideal, how they decided to change that, and how it made people unemployable even though they had been doing and looking within past expectations. 
• The idea of being this thin, even though there is a fact that the media have perpetuated it but in reality it was something that started by certain doctors before the First World War, where they started to promote dieting as a form of being healthier; however, this can also be connected to how the medical industry is fatphobic as well as, in some ways, racist because it was their form of going against people who were not who they considered straight-sized. 
• There was the idea that being thin meant that you looked younger. However, this is something we might have evolved from, because now it is called a baby face or young face when someone has more volume around their face, which shows this as a difference. 
• Even though we have said that models’ bodies are part of the problem and what causes people to go through body image struggles, in this article it says that there is not enough scientific data to back this up. However, even if that’s true, many qualitative studies show evidence to the contrary. People looking at this media have become more insecure, and this might not be scientific, but to bring out a lot of data, one book that I can talk about or use as a source is the book “Beauty Sick” by Renee Engeln, PhD, where she speaks about the way beauty standards affect women. She uses anagrams to explain different women’s relationships and how they kept on evolving and being seen in different ways. 
• The author of this article is actually a professor, or at least was one 10 years ago at CSM. I think it is very interesting that she looks at the history of modeling, how it affects body image, and how it has evolved. I will try to contact her to see if she can be one of my experts. It is very broad and discusses how models have been viewed since the time of mannequins and how they are seen differently today.
• I think that this is a very interesting article because it looks at the research that is out there very critically, looking at how models started and how it has changed through the time but still has some similarities today, as well as looking at the effect that models have had, but also looking at the forms in which the models are treated, not only looking at it from a critical perspective but trying to understand the industry as a whole.