So have been hearing that some people in the fashion industry do not agree with Milan's move to actually ban 'sick-looking models' who have a BMI under 18. Granted, some reasons given are quite valid:

- BMI inaccurate:
Very true actually, if you do research surveying a wide range people with different body types, you kinda find that some perfectly healthy, athletic people have soaring BMIs that would otherwise categorize them as obese.

Come on, I was looking through a livejournal community's response to said issue, and had enough varied answers.

- Legislation not the only answer:
True, gotta throw in the whole educating-the-youths package.

BUT!

BUT!

When Elite accuses this recent development for using the fashion industry as a scapegoat for spikes in eating disorders, well!

Who in the world are they trying to kid?

Right, people didn't starve themselves a decade back to look heroin chic. Of course. Not for fashion. They just...weren't hungry.

When they say that the industry is being used as a scapegoat, they're saying that they don't have that much of an influence in the real world after all, and god knows that ain't true. People at the top of the industry themselves know very well how influential fashion is, and what that spokesman said is probably the hugest, embarrassingly blatant,whopping lie I've ever heard in the media.

People watch celebrities and who we define as beautiful and naturally, if stupidly, we try want to have some semblance of that beauty. If you say that well, high fashion doesn't have that much of an impact on the common Lime-reading teenager, okay. But you can't deny that the celebrites that said teenager does know about, and probably adores do follow trends set by high fashion.

I think more concrete evidence about how influential fashion is anyway, is to consider the changing trends in beauty. Not in decades, I'm talking CENTURIES. During the Renaissance, fat ladies were in. Reubans through his paintings made sure that even now, we know that at some point of human history, fat people were hot.

Aiya - Singlish for emphasis! - and what's really wrong with not having sick-looking skeletal models on the runway? I think the difference between Jack Skeleton and the toned Gisele or even waif-like Gemma Ward is quite, quite apparent.

I suppose there's only a problem because it means somebody has to determine what's healthy, and what's not. But ooh, big moral dilemma! The fashion industry has only been like, deciding what's beautiful and what's not, at the loss of a massive amount of consumer welfare!! (Sorry, economics exam tomorrow.) Point is:

"In fashion, one day you're in and the next day you're out."

Sounds familiar, eh? But I still love you Heidi.

So c'mon fashion people - at least have the dignity and shame to play by your own rules! Can't keep the fat people (I use this term here REALLY loosely) off the runway just because you say so, and then cry foul when we want to keep the super-skinny people off too.

Maybe when you have size 10 people beside the size 0, I'll shut my trap.

In any case, this whole brou-ha-ha is as funny as the word brou-ha-ha itself because it accidentally and finally revealed the industry (and our) hypocrisy to the WHOLE WIDE WORLD so come, gather round and let's hear it: hahahahahaha!



(I think some equally generously proportioned comedian said that if she was in Reuban's time, she'd be the Pretty Young Thing and Kate Moss would be his paintbrush. What, it's funny!)