Dying to Be Beautiful

Whenever I flip through a magazine, go shopping, or scroll through post-Fashion Week photos on the internet, I find myself inundated with images of beautiful clothing worn by equally beautiful women. Some are doll-faced, like the doe-eyed Edie Campbell; others are glamorous, like the appropriately named Arizona Muse. Some possess an unconventional sort of allure—Daphne Groeneveld's full lips and gap-toothed smile, for example, hold particular sway over the fashion world. But all have one commonality: 34-24-34, the bust, waist, and hip measurements of female runway models all around the world.

The topic of weight and body image in fashion is a commonly discussed one, and it is no secret that the above measurements indicate, for women who are often upwards of 5'9" in height, an alarmingly low body mass index and weight—sometimes fatally so. The death of model Luisel Ramos during Montevideo Fashion Week from heart failure due to anorexia nervosa brought the issue to the spotlight in 2006, while the passing of her sister Eliana Ramos, also a model, allegedly from the same cause just six months later catapulted the controversy to a fever pitch.

So why do the slender waifs of the catwalk march on—why does the fashion industry continue to insist that their models be so thin? According to stylist David Zyla in an interview with Fox News, the decision is made out of deference to the artistic vision of the designer. "Models… are typically slim and androgynous so that audiences are not distracted [from the clothing] by a curvy hip or full bosom," he said. Kate Dillon, who has worked in the fashion industry as both a standard and plus-sized model, offered a similar rationale, telling the Huffington Post, "You want it to be about the clothes, so it's customary that you want the model to disappear. A lot of times they try to asexualize [her] to a hanger."

While casting decisions may be made to best display the artistic merits of these sartorial creations, fashion’s unique status as a mass-consumed form of popular art means that designers also hold a certain responsibility to the public. Aesthetic vision must sometimes give way to reality, because fashion does not exist in a vacuum; it exists within the confines of a very real, very impressionable society. Not only does the model feel that she must quite literally disappear behind the yards of cloth that drape her bony frame, but the hundreds of thousands of young women watching her totter down the runway also admire her beauty and feel that somehow, through any methods possible, they must make themselves look the same.

Indeed, studies compiled by the NYC Girls Project indicate that in America, 60 percent of girls compare their own bodies to those of fashion models, while 48 percent of girls aspire to models' particular brand of thinness. Their resulting dissatisfaction with their own bodies may contribute, in more extreme cases, to the ten million of women who suffer from anorexia or bulimia in their lifetime, and perhaps even the 7.9 percent of sufferers who die from one of the two disorders according to CNN and the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.

Their attempts to emulate these tall, slim figures are, grim as it may seem, often in vain. Though some models do subsist on little more than lettuce and water, or the famous combination of cigarettes and Diet Coke, they are likely also gifted with a genetic predisposition to be slender. And even if a member of the plebeian masses manages to whittle herself down to a single-digit body fat percentage, modeling agencies are not only seeking thinness; they are holding as their standard a highly specific body measurement ratio from which the vast majority of women deviate in some form or other. Women are not one-size-fits-all, and for many, no amount of lettuce can bring about the coveted 34-24-34. Yet the pursuit of this unattainable ideal is precisely the factor that drives women to extremes of dietary restriction and leads, eventually, to health concerns or even deaths like those of the Ramos sisters.

These issues are, of course, not due to the influence of fashion alone, but the industry does bear a particular onus for its ability to set the aesthetic ideals of our time. Ought we to know better, regardless? Perhaps. A generation should not crucify itself for some arbitrarily determined standard of beauty, but as we watch model after emaciated model strut down the catwalk, ours is damn well trying.

The clock ticks by. Stomachs growl. We hold our appetites.

After all, we are dying to be beautiful.