Are Models Still Starving Themselves to Get Work? (2024)

Seeking a diversion from work a few days ago, I clicked on an ad for a clothing company that popped up on my screen. I scanned the new arrivals and was about to click off the site (nothing appealed) when I noticed something about the models: They were all very thin.

It was somewhat hard to see their bodies, as the clothes they were wearing were billowy, but the hollows in their faces and very thin arms were signs that the models were probably size zero or double-zero. Their skinny bodies were disconcerting, and I found myself more interested in their gauntness than the clothes hanging on their skeletal frames.

Frankly, I was surprised. I had naively thought that the fashion industry’s insistence on models being so thin they were essentially human clothes hangers had passed us by. Or perhaps because the pandemic made buying new clothes irrelevant for so long, I had not paid any attention to the appearance of online or catalog models.

Well, I was wrong. Fashion designers seem still to insist that models diminish their body size to meet company specifications. In a review of a Milan fashion show this past fall, a fashion editor from the New York Times pointed out that the models were painfully skinny (and very young).

The health risks of inadequate caloric and nutrient intake do not have to be further investigated: Natural and man-generated catastrophes that severely limit or deny food intake have shown us the toll they can take on mental and physical health. Moreover, the effect of deliberate withholding of food in the eating disorder anorexia has made clear the health costs of self-imposed starvation.

But fashion models are still imposing semi-starvation on themselves to work. Agencies that represent models, and the designers who hire them, can have strict size standards for the bodies they hire. If they do not conform, if they deviate from these standards even an inch, they may not be hired until they bring themselves down to the demanded size. According to a review of these practices in an article for Health Nutritionist, models continue to be pressured to follow extremely unhealthy eating behaviors; not doing so may mean unemployment.

Some small pockets of resistance have emerged: In 2017, the Model Alliance and the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) tried to get models to pay attention to their health, along with pushing for more diversity among the models used in the fashion shows.

One tactic that may be working is banning ultra-thin models from runways. This has already been done in several countries; Israel was one of the first in 2013, and France, Italy, Spain, and the United States, among others, have followed. However, in countries like France and the U.S., an underweight model can still work if a doctor signs off on a health voucher.

Describing these eating habits as unhealthy is almost irrelevant, as the models often don’t eat enough to have their food intake analyzed. An apple a day, or diet soft drinks or coffee, doesn’t bear nutritional analysis: Not eating is not healthy.

What is so curious about our acceptance of skinny models who must starve themselves to be hired is that we would not allow this to happen to animals. Imagine if the owner of a dog entered into a championship show deliberately withheld food so the contours of the animal were better defined. If I put my pudgy dachshund on tiny rations until she looked more like a skinny Fenway Park frank than a knockwurst, I could be charged with animal abuse. To be sure, though, my dog depends on me for her meals. No one is taking food away from the models; they do it to themselves. However, if a model will not get work unless she loses enough weight to meet the exacting standards of her agency or the designer for whom she wants to work, she may all but stop eating.

Can the public help change the situation? To be sure, most of us don’t and never will attend a major runway show, or make purchases for trendy fashion outlets, so our opinion about the size of models in commercial shows is not likely to be heard. But what if we complain about the unnaturally low weight of models we see advertising clothes or other goods in print media or online? I wasn’t planning on buying clothes from the company whose ad appeared on my screen, but I did write to its customer service office, reporting how dismayed I was at the models' size. I saw women whose emaciated appearance made me worry about their health, not whether I liked the clothes they were wearing. Unfortunately, the likely automated answer I received was “Yes, we do carry clothes in larger sizes.” But I will keep trying.

Imagine if the buying public challenged designers to use models whose bodies resembled the bodies of those who might actually be buying the clothes. (Does it even need to be said that most of us would never be able to fit into the items the models wear?) If designers truly felt that an androgynous body composed chiefly of bones showed their clothes off best, then let them use mannequins. The tyranny of modeling agencies and fashion houses over the size and shape of their models should be challenged. Perhaps the answer has to await the response of the models themselves.