THREE DECADES OF THIN: How The Fashion Business Promotes Anorexia

It's not news that the fashion business prefers skinny models in its ads; that some models are anorexic; and that women who aren't skeletally thin end up with negative feelings about their bodies because of these ads (according to this study).

What is less obvious is the process that governs the way this works. Or that it's even a process, embedded into the industry.

You can trace the history of thinness in fashion models back to Twiggy in the 1960s, but it was only in the 1980s that designers began favoring ultra-thin models in earnest. Kate Moss for Calvin Klein was the tipping point: Her waif-like looks set a new weight standard for models well below that of the average adult woman. From that point on, Klein deliberately favored Moss and other ultra-thin models in his ads.

Today, some advertising and magazine editors have to edit fat back on to models' bodies in Photoshop. A fashion-shoot stylist once told B.I. that it was not uncommon for "plus-size" models to show up looking much thinner than their job titles would suggest—and with padding under their clothes to make themselves look more substantial.

In Europe, authorities have moved to ban ad imagery featuring impossibly thin women.

The issue made headlines again earlier this week when the editor of PLUS Model complained that former plus-size model Crystal Renn had slimmed down from a size 16 to a sample size, after she appeared in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition. Renn has struggled with an eating disorder.

How did we get here?

1985: Calvin Klein launches Obsession. He says he later used Kate Moss to popularize the 'waif' look.

The designer told WWD he liked Moss, who appeared on Obsession ads through the 1990s, because she was "always thin":

The reason for Kate [Moss] and this whole group of women I found that someone named “waifs” was because before that, a lot of women were getting breast implants and doing things to their buttocks. It was getting out of control. I just found something so distasteful about all that. I wanted someone who was natural, always thin. I was looking for the complete opposite of that glamour type that came before Kate.

Carre Otis, another Calvin Klein model from the 1980s, was actually anorexic.

She suffered heart damage because of it.

The problem begins with the fashion shoot.

Designers make their sample sizes—the clothes models wear for ads and editorial spreads— smaller and smaller, forcing the models who wear them to get thinner and thinner. Some models show up at fashion shoots looking so unhealthy that photo editors are forced to add fat to their bodies in retouching, and to airbrush out their protruding bones. Former Cosmopolitan U.K. editor Leah Hardy confessed:

"Thanks to retouching, our readers - and those of Vogue, and Self, and Healthy magazine – never saw the horrible, hungry downside of skinny. That these underweight girls didn't look glamorous in the flesh. Their skeletal bodies, dull, thinning hair, spots and dark circles under their eyes were magicked away by technology, leaving only the allure of coltish limbs and Bambi eyes."

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