I don’t know about you but catwalk images scare the bejeezus out of me. We shudder at images of the Holocaust and Biafra, yet for some reason extreme malnutrition and starvation is deemed culturally acceptable in fashion.
A new book by a former Australian Vogue editor casts a harrowing shadow over an industry where models regularly wind up hospitalized and put on a drip due to self-induced starvation. And by all accounts appearances are deceiving.
“You know how you read interviews where models insist that they eat a lot? Not true,” Kirstie Clements, who worked in the industry for 13 years, reveals in an article in the Independent. “The only way they can get that thin is to stop eating. They eat tissue paper to stave off the hunger pangs—literally ball it up and eat it.”
The Vogue Factor is an expose of a sick industry by an insider. In it she recalls a three-day fashion shoot. She never once saw the model eat, not even when she “could hardly stand or open her eyes.”
Hats off to Clements for her bravery and candor. Women need to know what really happens on the other side of the lens so we can stop buying into this twisted fantasy once and for all.
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