MILAN - "If that's all your article is going to be about, you'd better talk
to someone else."
Standing in the backstage area of a Burberry fashion show, Christopher
Bailey, usually the most charming and polite designer one could hope to
interview, just snapped.
I had started by asking him about his view on Spain's decision to ban
underweight models from Madrid fashion week.
He at first replied calmly: "We have to use common sense."
So I asked what common sense meant in practice. Had Burberry ever turned away
underweight models? Had Bailey ever seen a model and thought "she looks too
thin?"
This was when he broke off the interview, ending with the fashion world's
ultimate put-down: "It's just boring."
His comment sums up the fashion pack's reaction to a raging debate over
models that look sick and underfed, over a beauty ideal that some say encourages
teenagers to starve themselves.
It's boring.
On top of that, it's a debate on sickness and weakness in a scene that adores
power and self-confidence.
To be fair, Bailey's annoyance was understandable. He wanted to celebrate his
show of cool mini-dresses and elegant coats, the result of months of hard work,
not discuss eating disorders.
"WE ARE SKINNY, IT'S OUR WORK"
And yet, the twig-like arms protruding from the pretty bell-sleeves at
Burberry; the waists cinched to cartoon-like proportions at Dolce &
Gabbana's D&G show; the sunken cheeks and bony shoulders at Prada; all
begged some questions.
The answers came mostly in the form of shoulder-shrugging, eye-rolling, and
stifled yawns.
Designers such as Giorgio Armani said they did not use anorexic models.
Industry players, model agents and stylists said most girls in the fashion world
were genetically thin.
And the models themselves?
"I think it's discrimination (to ban underweight models). We are skinny, this
is our work. There are lots of overweight people working in offices but I'm not
going to say This girl is fat, she can't work in an office'," said Valentina
Zelyaeva, a 23-year-old Russian.
But Zelyaeva, a willowy blonde sitting backstage at Miss Bikini, also pointed
out that many girls at the shows were 14-year-olds who were that skinny because
they had not reached puberty.
So designers dress up 14-year-olds to make them look like 19-year-olds who
look great in clothes that will be sold to 40-year-olds.
It would be simplistic to say that this child-woman beauty ideal is the main
factor behind eating disorders.
Yet it also seems cowardly to deny any connection. When I was a teenager, two
of my close friends developed anorexia. For both of them, it had started with a
diet to "look better."
They insisted they were eating normally, even as their arms started to look
like stick drawings.
"WE ALL EAT LIKE CRAZY"
When 24-year-old Shannan Click from New York, slouching in a chair with a
plate of grilled vegetables and lettuce on her lap, told me that she and her
fellow models were naturally thin, I was reminded of those school friends.
"If I want a hamburger, I'll have a hamburger. My whole family is thin and we
all eat like crazy," she said, her brown hair pinned up in curls and her eyelids
painted a vivid blue for the D&G show.
With her height of 1.74 metres and her weight of 52 kg, Click has a body mass
index -- a ratio of weight to height squared -- of about 17.2.
That would bar her from Madrid fashion week, which earlier this month
excluded models with a body mass index under 18.
The World Health Organization classifies women with a body mass index of less
than 18.5 as underweight.
Yet to me, Click did not look sickly thin. She looked beautifully thin.
Maybe, after seeing row upon row of tall, bony teenagers on the catwalks and
backstage, I had simply become unable to distinguish between the two.
