Size Zero

Super Models.

Concern over the size of Super Models is well-founded. I listened attentively to a designer explaining how his clothes look better when hung from a super waif.

In other words,it's the public's fault. We demand nice-looking clothes. Clothes look nicest when hung on a skinny girl. Ergo – it's our fault.

Rubbish!

The public are not crying out for more emaciated models. In fact, the public can not accurately judge. The public are just as much tools of the fashion industry as the models themselves. The public should know better, but that's not the same as using them as a scapegoat for the fashion industries less than savoury practices.

What's really disturbing is the relationship between the waifs on catwalks and child sexual exploitation. No-one seems to write about this relationship, so I will.

I'm old enough to remember when all the Hollywood sex goddesses were full sized women. The epitome of the female form was fully-grown and fully rounded. Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Russell and their peers were very much in need of artificial help in holding up their attributes – not a place to hang clothes from their frame and in need of a good meal. I can't remember the fashion industry complaining that clothes did not look good on Norma Jean! Her iconic, and fully-fleshed image lasted throughout the decades following her death.

Is there a relationship between what is perceived as the ideal female form and misplaced desire? I think so.

When the Queens of Hollywood were fully-rounded, no-one had ever heard of paedophilia. It may have been in the dictionary, but no-one discussed it or concerned themselves with it. For all intents and purposes it did not exist until the 1990's.

It would be ridiculous to imagine that Super Models “cause” perversion. But, and this is a big but, they probably encourage it.

If men are constantly bombarded with what is purported to be the ideal female and she is the same size as a pre-teenage girl, is it altogether surprising that some will get the wrong message? If Hollywood stars – like Keira Kneightly – are so thin they have to sue newspapers for reporting on their (supposed) eating disorders, what message is this sending out to young girls and (more importantly) to men of all ages?

Could this be at least part of the cause of misplaced sexual desire?

There are no statistics, and, I suspect, very little research is being done in this area. Just by mentioning this in a blog I may find my name on a database. I suspect it would be impossible to research the relationship between sexual perversion and size zero models. Either you would be arrested or the fashion industry would have you so discredited that the work would be useless.