Mea Culpa: February 2007

Anorexia is a terrible, devastating disease and my heart goes out to all those who suffer from it. I find the idea, let alone the image of a man or woman starved to the point of death to be utterly grotesque given the abundance of the developed world. However, I do take issue with the scapegoating of models and the fashion industry with regards to the disease. It is true that models are thin and often exceedingly so. But let us not forget that they are chosen for their exaggerated proportions and not their weight. A girl can lose all the weight she wants but if her proportions do not suit the whims and vision of a designer then the matter of her weight is irrelevant.

The fact of the matter is, most of us do not possess the proportions and build of these models. I, for one, am not going to get any taller nor are my shoulders going to magically broaden overnight. Quite frankly I think that this is as it should be. High fashion is all about luxury and fantasy. It is only natural that the representatives of high fashion be somewhat unreal and unattainable. Our lives are mundane as they are. Why should we pay obscene amounts of money for more of it? When purchasing designer clothes I want to feel like I am buying into something that is remarkable, special. As a result I like to think about models in the same way as I do about professional athletes. They are remarkable, genetic freaks. If one were to apply the same line of hysterical reasoning that rails against models, then we should also ban people like Michael Jordan or Ian Thorpe for making us all feel bad that we cannot achieve the same physical feats that they accomplish so easily. Why is it that a person who happens to be born with the right set of physical attributes that allows him to pull himself across a body of water faster than anybody else be celebrated whilst another who happens to have a rather fast metabolism, symmeterical features and long tapering limbs be denied a means of earning a living?

Its incredibly easy to blame the fashion industry for the ills of teenagers living in developed world as it implies no fault upon the deeper dysfunctional social norms that permeate it. On the one hand, there exists the idea of meritocracy that states that those who are the brightest and most able should obtain a greater share of economic and social wealth. The duality of this however is that those who do not find themselves in possession of superior ability are left with a smaller share of the glory. Yet almost everybody is told that they are remarkable and special when really nothing could be further from the truth. And so we have created for ourselves an overanxious society where everybody is seeking to be remarkable, desperately trying to find that one thing that sets him or her apart from everybody else. Rather than doing the things that genuinely interest us, we are constantly tempted to pursue activities that signal our distinctiveness, be it baton twirling, cheerleading, beauty pageantry or even cup stacking. It is no surprise that young men and women should also want to add weight loss to that list of extra curricular activities.

So let us accept the fact that the great majority of us are mediocre by construction and that there is dignity and joy in that. Let us try to step outside of ourselves and appreciate those who are remarkable for they are no more or less than us in any fundamental way but perhaps a little more deserving of our attention and time.