THIS is what it looks like to be insane about weight.
As Marc has already reported, a Madrid fashion show has banned participation by models whose BMIs are below 18. The “normal weight” range is considered to be 18.5-24.9; a person with a BMI below 18.5 is classified as “underweight.”
(You can calculate BMI here.)
The BMI measure, as many people already know, has problems, but they are mostly associated with identifying healthy individuals as overweight because they have above average muscle mass. To put this in perspective, my BMI is 21.8 (if I claim to be 5′3″, which is stretching it a bit, but I also have 17.3% body fat, so I am probably one of those people whose BMI is higher than it really ought to be anyway). In order to have a BMI below 18, I would have to weigh 101 pounds, which I think might place me in the NEGATIVE BOSOM category. It wouldn’t be pretty, that’s for damn sure.
Of course, the fashion industry is deeply concerned about this attack on “gazelle-like” models and their own personal freedoms:
Organizers say they want to project an image of beauty and health, rather than a waif-like, or heroin chic look.But Cathy Gould, of New York’s Elite modeling agency, said the fashion industry was being used as a scapegoat for illnesses like anorexia and bulimia.
“I think its outrageous, I understand they want to set this tone of healthy beautiful women, but what about discrimination against the model and what about the freedom of the designer,” said Gould, Elite’s North America director, adding that the move could harm careers of naturally “gazelle-like” models.
First of all, bitch, PLEASE. “Gazelle-like”? Me at 101 pounds wouldn’t be “gazelle-like,” unless we’re talking some kind of walking dead horror movie zombie gazelle skeleton haunting the post-apocalypse.
And “the freedom of the designer”? The freedom to do what, exactly? Design clothes that only fit 1.0% of the human female population? Either get a real job or design me some fucking pants that FIT, asshat.
The above quote, incidentally, I pulled from the CNN article, which as I noticed when it ran, does not provide the actual BMI cut-off for the show, reporting only that 30% of the models initially booked for the show fell below it. I’m a little surprised that the number isn’t higher, but models probably do lift a few weights. Given that the cut-off is so low,* I find CNN’s failure to report it pretty weasel-some, but not, unfortunately, surprising. This country is insane about weight.
For instance: I was talking to a friend of mine last night. We’ll call her S. S.’s younger sister has lost a huge amount of weight in the past year–she went from a size 22 to a size 11. The only problem is, the younger sister has implemented absolutely no lifestyle changes that would account for the loss: she never exercises and eats junk, and lots of it. This is nothing new, but it’s exactly what she was doing before the weight started mysteriously coming off. She’s not even in a situation where she’s walking more than she was previously.
Now, when I lost about 45 pounds in five months by working out six times a week** and carefully monitoring my calorie intake, there were people in my social circle who suggested to others that I had developed an eating disorder. I was constantly fielding queries about whether or not I was eating enough. So you’d think losing 11 sizes in a year for no discernable reason at all would definitely raise some red flags, right?
Aside from their grandmother, S. is the only member of their immediate family who thinks that this is cause for concern. Her younger sister refuses to see a doctor; S. is afraid this is because the younger sister got a boyfriend after losing a lot of the weight, and associates him with the weight loss, which is probably true, but can’t account for the rest of the family’s willful blindness–although of course the root issue is the same: people are so convinced that Being Skinny is the right and MORAL state of being that they naturally associate it with happiness and success in romance and all other areas of life, and a 19-year-old girl’s parents don’t see any problem with her losing HALF A PERSON in a year doing NOTHING. Hey, weight loss! Hooray!
So excuse me if I’m not too worried about public sentiment turning against the gazelle girls any time soon.
—
*Especially when you consider what the “overweight” and “obese” lines are–before I went on Online Weight Watchers, I was over the 30.0 cut-off for obesity.
**And I’d been working out for the seven months prior, which is probably why the weight came off so fast–I’d built up substantial muscle mass lifting weights, and muscle burns more calories.
September 19th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
I never really understood the skeleton fashion model thing. I guess that it appeals to the handful of people that fashion shows actually target?
I wonder if this Madrid fashion show was thinking the same thing and decided that healthy looking women might be more appealing or if its political.
Also, when are women going to get real sizes? Whats so wrong about inches and centimeters?! Ditto for shoes, I dislike guessing what my size is in different brands. That is all.
(dear god this page is pink)
September 19th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
OK, so I RTFA, it was certainly political. Oh well.
September 19th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
I just went and weighed myself and even subtracted a kilo for clothes/shoes and the BMI was 28.2. I figure I’d have to starve myself and lose some serious muscle mass in order to get down to a BMI “healthy” weight.
And I have to say your friend S’s family are insane. Sudden weight loss can be an indication of diabetes or ovarian cancer.
September 19th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Matt: I know, it’s fucking crazy. S. had a really good friend who died of cancer, and unexplained sudden weight loss is how they initially knew something was wrong. It’s a very small community; it’s not like her family didn’t notice.
Ian: Don’t ask me. I have ranted on women’s sizes at length. Also, yes, it is pink, but I’ve changed the header image to one of my favorite photos from Japan and I think it relieves things a bit.
September 20th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
I’m pretty sure the skeletal model look is to reflect what the (usually awful) clothing would look like on a hangar. I refuse to believe that anyone actually believes it’s attractive, unless they’re those disturbed pro-anorexia people. When I saw the “gazelle-like” quote I was really hoping I’d somehow managed to hallucinate that part. As you point out, there is nothing gazelle-like about starvation. And moreover, no one “naturally” looks like that, unless they’re suffering a famine in their home countries.
I think BMI is a little ridiculous, though. For one thing, there seems to be only one scale for men AND women, when women have a higher body fat percentage than men. Also, breasts. I’d think it’d kind of throw the whole thing off. Then there are the cut-off points that you note. My bf would be well in the overweight category when actually he’s kind of on the thin side, but he’s short and there isn’t a trace of fat on him. Mine is slightly below yours, but I have minimal muscle mass. I’d have to be utterly disgusting to make “underweight”, though.
And, um, WOW does S’s sister need to get her ever-diminishing ass to a doctor.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:35 am
Suzie: Since fat weighs less than muscle, the single scale issue seems likely to just overestimate the number of overweight men, I’d guess. According to another calculator that gives you your weight percentile according to sex and age, my father has a lower BMI than 90% of men in their 50s. I’m only in the 34th percentile for women in their 20s, though–it’s probably one of the more competitive BMI brackets. :p
And yeah, S. said she was going to talk to the sister’s boyfriend about the weight loss. Not that I condone relationships where you do stuff solely because your boyfriend tells you to, but in this situation, I figure anything that actually gets her to the doctor is justified.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:36 pm
The whole model issue is not just happening in Madrid. There are murmurings and rumors that most of Europe will be following suit. Madrid just got the privelege of doing it first. Unfortunately, there seem to be no such murmurs in the good ‘ole U.S.A.
I was also wondering … the BMI thing … Alot of people retain the extra skin after significant weight loss. (It’s true. It happened to my best friend and her husband.) I’m assuming that if there’s enough of this extra skin, it adds up, right? So someone who loses 80 pounds, but has alot of extra skin, could still be considered overweight. ??
September 21st, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Kristi: It’s true about retaining extra skin; I’ve had some issues with that myself, although I’ve heard that eventually your body scales it back down. However, I think you’d have to retain a LOT of extra skin for it to affect your BMI that strongly, unless you were already right on the cusps. I don’t think skin in itself weighs that much.
September 25th, 2006 at 7:24 am
I agree that BMI is a blunt instrument, if a useful tool for some things. I’d LOVE to know what my bodyfat level is (and if I bothered to book another fitness assessment, I would, I suppose). According to my BMI I’m a whisker over “obese”, and I’m a size 14 (US 10-ish), or a 12 in some things. This doesn’t exactly compute.