The logic is that consumers will buy an outfit from the gap because they aspire to look like the artificial images of models the gap uses in its ads. They sell to the aspiration – however unrealistic and unconscious – to look like the model.

I don’t think that’s it, actually. It’s not so much an aspirational image as a punishing image. I think the idea is to make women so miserable with how we look we overspend on clothes and make-up to compensate.

Why 19?

The question that comes from THIS, though, is which came first? The chicken or the egg?

There’s also the question of whether it’s an allowable practice even if there is some inherent sales-damaging property of fat (or average) bodies. IIRC, the airline companies made related arguments against hiring nonwhite flight attendants: we aren’t racist, heavens no, but our customers don’t want them in the cabins; they won’t be as happy with their service. We’re just giving them what they demand.

This I suppose is what happens when you start not only enlisting women in the military, but drafting them and teaching them to use Uzis. Israel is looking to ban the use of anorexic fashion models. No wonder there are…

That’s true about high-fashion, but clothes are a product, and marketers do intentionally use too-thin models to sell mass-marketed clothes. The logic is that consumers will buy an outfit from the gap because they aspire to look like the artificial images of models the gap uses in its ads. They sell to the aspiration – however unrealistic and unconscious – to look like the model.

Again, this is true, but not of the fashion side of the modeling industry. The side that market that caters to actually selling clothes to the masses is the commercial industry, which works in a slightly different fashion but is still commerce-driven. Marketing studies continually show that people don’t like to buy from stores that use less-than-ideal models (for example, using a plus-sized model in a store that sells a whole range of clothing, from petites to plus yields lower sales than using a petite or an average model for the same store). The question that comes from THIS, though, is which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Are people finicky about buying from a store that uses a model who is, say, larger than usual because they don’t want to be associated with that, or are they that way to begin with because the stores have done that to us for so long?

Commercial modeling has its own set of demons, although they already use a much wider range of models than fashion modeling. It’s driven entirely by the stores and what the stores are requesting for their ad campaigns, and the ad campaigns are driven by what marketing data is telling them will be the best ROI.

From the article quoted:

“”I think 50% of the problem can be dealt with by us. If the fashion stores, food companies and other consumers of model services refuse to employ unhealthy women, that will remove one part of the motivation to reduce weight.”–Barkan, Israeli photographer

Fine. Good. Why does Barkan need a law to help this problem? If he thinks it’s so important, why doesn’t he refuse to photograph models that are unhealthy (without getting into the very important problems of defining ‘unhealthy’, for Barkan or for the Israeli government)?

I know this sounds naive, but really, I think it points to tekanji’s point–this is passing the buck, and passing it to people who are less to blame for the problem than most others (i.e. I would blame modeling agencies and photographers long before I’d blame the models themselves, although everybody has some responsibility for the problem, including consumers of the advertising and clothes).

the fashion industry in general… have basically no interest whatsoever in improving anyone’s body image. It’s not about people. It’s about the clothes.

That’s true about high-fashion, but clothes are a product, and marketers do intentionally use too-thin models to sell mass-marketed clothes. The logic is that consumers will buy an outfit from the gap because they aspire to look like the artificial images of models the gap uses in its ads. They sell to the aspiration – however unrealistic and unconscious – to look like the model.

It seems strange to me that this law would be crafted with the model’s well being in mind, but I think it could have an impact on the collect psyche of advertising viewers by removing at least the most extreme anorexic images, though twisty’s totally correct that the photos can (and are) retouched to appear skinnier than the already skinny models…