Ghost of a flea

Well.......

Certainly, lots of countries try to stem the tide of obesity that tends to rise as people do better economically.

If what the mom says is accurate, she was starving herself for her career. It would be interesting to know how many designers toss out the size-2 models from their shows in favor of the size-zeros. The models would notice such a trend and act accordingly.

My sister had a track coach in college that actually would tell the girls to stop eating so much when they'd stop for food on the way to/from away meets. It ended up driving some of the girls off the team, and others into dangerous eating (or non-eating) habits.

The fashion thing is no different from the wrestling problem. A UMichigan wrestler died of a heart attack, wearing a rubber suit and exercising, trying to sweat out the last pound or so to "make weight" for a match. Bad incentives can drive desperate behavior by both models and athletes.

I think there is a twisted irony to the mourning for a model lost to the demands of the fashion industry. If she had not been beautiful who death would have gone unremarked.

Have you seen the Guardian's Digested Read of Victoria's book?

But then again surely an anorexic who goes into modelling has serious problems.

I only now notice the model was named Ana. "Ana" is the name by which many anorexics refer to their condition, usually with admiration or affection. It is as if "Ana" can grant the power to resist hunger and the pressures of friends and family to eat something. I was very close someone struggling with anorexia and listening to her talk about Ana made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I think there is something going on here that is far more complicated that the pat answers I would get from my communication studies students, i.e. the cultural Marxist explanation that advertising/capitalism cause eating disorders. They might as well be blaming the Devil for all their explanation provides no more solution than to combat the sins of representing beauty and worse yet making money.

Every time someone says their beauty idol was Audrey Hepburn, or when I see ads like the Gap ads of a few months ago touting their "skinny black pants" and using Hepburn's image, I think of how her petite, delicate looks were due in part to the fact that while living in Amsterdam during World War II in her teens she suffered from malnutrition.

Whoops, I mean Arnhem, not Amsterdam.

Brutal!