With Fashion Week in full swing, journalists and bloggers at the scene are frenetically taking notes about the clothing, style, and feelings the fabrics evoke. Outside the tents and in the trenches of society at-large, doctors, authors, professors, and other experts are at the ready to give expert commentary about the bodies wearing our future fashion trends.
Source: ProfNet
Dr. Harry Brandt, director of the Center For Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt in Towson, Md
“We hope that by issuing health guidelines to designers, the American fashion industry is finally beginning to acknowledge the dangers of extreme thinness in female fashion models, as well as the negative impact on perceived body image among those who look up to these models. There is still much more the American fashion industry can do to ensure the protection of young women and men who model; for example, models should be required to pass a physical examination before walking the runway to make certain they are in proper health form, while designers should include models of various weights and body types in runway shows and fashion magazines to show that different body types can look good in a variety of fashions.”
Diane Salvatore, editor-in-chief of Ladies’ Home Journal:
“I’ve been heartened to read all the news about the fashion industry finally making an effort to discourage extreme thinness in models, but it took the anorexia- induced death of a Brazilian model (and five more Brazilian women in quick succession) to get attention paid to what has been obvious to most American women for a long time: Super-skinny fashion models are unhealthy and unattractive. Not to mention that showcasing such is downright unhelpful to any woman who is looking for style pointers for her normally proportioned body.”
Leslie Lipton is author of the newly released book Unwell (December 2006), which was inspired by her own five-year struggle with anorexia:
“There is so much discussion about models being too skinny that it is so important to realize how much these models influence how teenagers and grown women, even senior citizens, perceive themselves, and how this can play a role in this particular mental illness. Anorexia nervosa is a disorder that affects 2.5 million Americans and has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.”
Walter Kaye, M.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, is the principal investigator of the genetics of anorexia nervosa study, the first and largest NIH-funded study of the causes of eating disorders. Kaye believes that while skinny models don’t cause eating disorders, they can be the environmental trigger that causes those already made susceptible to an eating disorder by their genetic make-up to begin to develop symptoms:
“We often hear that societal pressures to be thin cause many young women and men to develop an eating disorder. Many individuals, for a number of reasons, are concerned with their weight. Yet less than half of 1 percent of all women develops anorexia nervosa, which indicates to us that societal pressure alone isn’t enough to cause someone to develop this disease. Our research has found that genes seem to play a substantial role in determining who is vulnerable to developing an eating disorder. However, the societal pressure isn’t irrelevant; it may be the environmental trigger that releases a person’s genetic risk.”
Dr. Jana Klauer, physician, nutritionist and author of the New York Times bestseller How The Rich Get Thin:
“I’ve built my medical practice upon the science of successful dieting and teaching my patients about the rewards gained from a lifetime commitment to health, fitness and nutrition. With the correct balance of nutrition, a slim, strong and healthy body can be achieved. Many models in the industry are naturally tall and slim, but are starving themselves to the unrealistic ideal. This behavior is encouraged in an environment of ultra-thin peers. The current spotlight on dangerously thin models is a great opportunity for the industry to present a healthful image of beauty.”
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When you love fashion, but live in a city that thinks flip-flops are appropriate all-weather, all-occasion footwear, all the hub-bub, tra-la-la and glamour of the 2007 Mercedes Benz Fall Fashion Week can seem a bit like a glittery, albeit chilly, cashmere wrap and buttery-leather boots kind of fantasy-land.