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Want the Skinny on Models? Fat Chance!

Americans see 3000 ads in any given day. The 3000 different ads could be devoted to anything--everything from food, to dishwashing detergent, to books, and in particular, fashion. One finds fashion ads even when searching for "fashion ads" on an online search engine, such as an ad for Style.com as a "sponsored link" on Google. In her lifetime, nearly every American woman has been exposed to an issue of Vogue or Cosmopolitan magazine. Many women even purchase these magazines, leafing through the pages many times only to be exposed to super-thin models, who wear, on average, four or five sizes smaller than the woman looking at her. Constant comparison to carefully chosen representatives of the human race often leaves women feeling inadequate or ugly. The current media image of the ideal woman's dimensions does not represent most women, and the emphasis on this deviation from the norm does more harm than good.

The media uses several avenues to define their ideas of physical "beauty;" one of the most prevalent ways to influence the public occurs through advertisements. Companies mass produce images for general distribution, which generally feature a model to give the product a "human" aspect. To those girls aspiring to be fashion models, agencies encourage that only females at a minimum height of 5'8'' and who fall within the weight range of 108-125 pounds apply ("So You Wanna Be a Model?"). These ads appear everywhere. In the magazine Vanity Fair, one needs not look past the first page or two to find Tommy Hilfiger and Allen Schwartz ads, featuring super-slim women in revealing clothing that leaves quite little to the imagination (see Appendix I). In Rolling Stone magazine, the designer Calvin Klein shows off his jeans and his model's ribcage (see Appendix II). Thin models don't merely appear in fashion ads, however; an ad in the October 15th Newsweek contains a Dell computer ad with a very thin woman lounging around with her laptop (see Appendix III). The physical standards of these women, through repeated viewing by the public, have diffused into society as a whole; now, many women compare themselves to models, only to find a great conflict: the average woman wears a size 12 to 14, and the average model wears a size 4 to 6. The media sets an erroneous example with extremely thin models; the physical standard by which a person should measure herself should be reasonably attainable and should promote the good health of the individual.

The shape and small size of the model may look attractive, but, in reality, can rarely be reached and then maintained. Only five percent of the population has the natural body type to remain model-thin (Natenshon). The other ninety-five percent must actively strive to reach these waistline goals. Where one must admire the motivation of women to transform themselves through hard work and the willpower to stick to less appealing eating habits and strenuous exercise routines, most women fall short of reaching their goals--and not from any lack of trying, in many cases. Women of different genetic make-ups have different body shapes and sizes; trying to conform to one ridiculously rare shape and size will not work. Many factors prevent women from having a supermodel figure, from frame size to metabolism to simple genetics (Natenshon). Do elusive measurements comprise an acceptable standard to which women should hold themselves? If a society expects a woman to look a certain way, she should be able to conform to those expectations in a safe and sensible way. The media stresses extreme thinness as a beauty standard, but in truth, most women cannot achieve this size without resorting to drastic and unhealthy measures, and many cannot achieve it at all. The few women who do mold themselves to the size of the average model often resort to unhealthy diets and exercise regimens to do so, which can lead to severe eating disorders.

Doesn't thin correspond to healthy, though? Not necessarily. One of the most prevalent problems in health lingo sprang up when "thin" became the equivalent of "healthy." Although many thin, healthy people exist, the measure of a healthy weight doesn't base itself on one's waist size. Rather, a healthy weight can be determined by the Body Mass Index (BMI), which indicates the level of obesity based on the ratio of weight to height ("Health Formulas and Calculators"). A calculation of the BMI at the high end of the typical weight range for a model at 5'8'' demonstrates that, even at the greatest weight and the shortest height, models "weigh in" at an underweight 19 on the BMI scale. In reality, a shorter model would have to weigh even less and would have a lower BMI number. In this case, "thin" does not equal "healthy." At 5'8'', a woman should weigh between 132 and 164 pounds to fall into the healthy range. Women should strive to be healthy, not merely "thin." Models do not exemplify a healthy weight, therefore they should not set the standard for the ideal woman.

The 'ideal' for a physically perfect woman that the media presents has flaws. Most women, however, don't see this; individuals believe that they themselves have the flaws, instead. Rather than showing the average woman, who has a height of 5 feet 5 inches and weighs 159 pounds (Kaplan), or showing a healthy woman at 5'8'' and 132 pounds, the media confronts women everyday with unhealthily thin women of similar proportions. These women can be found in any magazine, in ads, in commercials, in television shows, in movies, and on websites. Any woman shopping for clothing in a catalogue or online must gauge her selections based on models who look nothing like her.

Differences between the average model and the average woman can easily be seen in the image in Appendix IV, created by a virtual model for American Eagle at AE.com. The woman on top represents a model based on height and average weight, 5'8'' and 117 lb. The woman in the middle represents a woman in the healthy weight range for the model's height, weighing 148 lb. The woman on the bottom represents the average woman based on height and weight, 5'5'' and 159 lb. The average woman looks "fat" next to the average model, but according to her BMI, the average woman barely can be classified as overweight. If a woman with the same dimensions as the average woman lost only nine pounds, she would weigh in as healthy at 150 lb.; models, however, weigh 25 percent less than the average woman (McNair), and a woman in the healthy range can still be dissatisfied with herself in comparison. Since the thin model makes the average woman appear "fat," average women also often feel fat in comparison.

This discrepancy between the "ideal" and the average can have harmful consequences. The obvious conflict between the media image of beauty and the average woman creates doubt and self-consciousness in a woman's mind, as the amount spent on weight loss and beauty products each year suggests--weight and beauty industries in the US gross $40 billion a year, a staggering number even compared to Canada's $3 billion per year (McNair). The desire to be thin rather than healthy sticks in many women's psyches, sometimes even causing women to develop eating disorders to rectify their visions of themselves with what they see in the media (Young). Diet fads and exercise gimmicks often lure women, preventing them from losing weight the "right" way, and the example of skinny models causes unrealistic weight-loss goals to be set: a woman who only needs to lose nine or ten pounds to be healthy will often set her goals at twenty-five or thirty pounds to look like a certain model or to reach a certain size. The over-reaching of these goals make the task seem difficult and daunting, and actually many times can deter women from weight loss. The effect of the media influence can be positive, but only if women implement a balanced diet and an effective exercise routine to achieve healthy weight-loss goals.

The focus on thin women has completely permeated American culture. Clothing stores, such as the Gap and American Eagle, cater to thin women by only offering smaller sizes in their stores. American Eagle retailers carry no larger than a size 12 in their stores (AE.com), while the Gap carries up to a size 16 (Gap.com); both stores carry larger sizes exclusively online, not exceeding a size 20. If larger women want to shop for clothing, many times shopping becomes inconvenient as narrow selection forces them to specialty stores or the internet to shop. Other products cater only to smaller women, as well; most maxi-pads, for example, fit a size six woman on average. Seeing that American women (and men, for that matter) have become unsatisfied with their weight, an industry of diet and exercise products has popped up; products such as SlimFast and the Hollywood Miracle Diet encourage those unhealthy dieting habits, while exercise fads such as the Ab Roller attempt to make a person believe that a thin body can be bought without effort. Multitudes of books and "weight-loss experts" advise people to lose weight, and each gives a different method: low-fat diets, low-fat diets, low-calorie diets, and so on. Few Americans escape the exposure to slim-down trends, and most of them could probably hum the tune for "1-800-94-Jenny."

International views about American standards for women differ. In a recent article in the Times Online in the United Kingdom, Thomas Stuttaford hails the "weight-conscious" woman, and acknowledges that the problem of obesity has run rampant in the US; he views our reactions as a combatance, perhaps overly so, since he suggests that, "Even being overweight, let alone clinically obese, is almost as expensive to America as being a problem drinker" (Times Online). The French, on the other hand, certainly cannot understand our penchant for low-fat purchasing, because mealtimes in France center around family and celebration and not fat grams; to Germans, food can be considered fuel and not much more, so the worry over calories does not exist. Americans focus as much on dieting as most of Europe, including Eastern Europe (Bundy).

Slowly but surely, America tries to resolve the discrepancy between the model and the average woman--not with fad diets, but by catering to the larger woman. More stores now carry larger sizes (if only online for now), Always has developed a plus-sized maxi, and stores for larger women have become less obscure and more fashionable. Even with the slow progress, however, the models and actresses that set the examples for women remain underweight while obesity plagues Americans. Until American advertising agencies completely recognize the need to use healthy models, though, "thin" will continue to equal "healthy."





Image: Average Model Compared to Average Woman





Works Cited

Allen Schwartz ad. Vanity Fair July 2000.

Bundy, Beverly. "The American diet suffers from a split personality." Active.com. 29 March 2002. .

Calvin Klein ad. Rolling Stone 28 February 2002: issue 890.

Dell Computer ad. Newsweek 15 October 2001.

"Health Formulas and Calculators." Health News Network. 1998. 28 March 2002. .

Kaplan, Allison. "Fashion industry pursues a perfect fit." The Capital. 17 March 2002. 28 March 2002.

McNair, Fiona. "News Front." SEE Magazine. 1996. 29 March 2002. .

Natenshon, Abigail. "Are You Overweight?" Empowered Parents. 2000. 28 March 2002. .

"So You Wanna Be a Model?" SoYouWanna.com. 28 March 2002. .

Stuttaford, Thomas, Dr. "Fat is a male issue." Times Online. 28 March 2002. 29 March 2002. .

Tommy Hilfiger ad. Vanity Fair June 1998.

Virtual model image. AE.com. 19 March 2002.

Young, Courtney. "Does the Media Dictate Beauty Standards?" DrKoop.com. 5 April 2000. 28 March 2002. .