Misleading and useless CNN video related to New York Spring 2009 fashion week

The clowns at CNN recently released a video on whether thin is still in in the fashion world.

The video is reproduced below should CNN take it off its site.

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CNN correspondent Alina Cho starts with the claim that the modeling lifestyle is glamorous.  What is the reality?  Whereas the photoshoots and the catwalk are glamorous, most high-fashion models don’t have a very happy existence.  The glamour is mostly fake or outward.  Too many of them have to starve to fulfill the thinness requirement.  More details on this topic can be found in some previous articles posted at this site:

Only a minority of big-name models approach a happy existence, but they have often gone through starvation misery to make it big.  The video features quotes from Kate Moss…“Nobody ever fed me.”…“I was so thin I hated it.”

Cho even mentions 6 fashion model deaths related to undereating in recent years, but quickly states that this seemed to wake up the fashion industry.  Cho says that the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) issued guidelines “banning runway models under 16” and “calling on designers and casting agents to encourage models who look sick to get help.”  The reality was that the CFDA, facing a potential public relations nightmare resulting from the starvation-caused deaths of some fashion models, issued a statement of fake concern and “guidelines” it had no intention of following through.  Months later, it was clear that the CFDA waited for the hot issue of the deaths to become a distant memory and then went along pretending as if nothing had happened.  Read the details on CFDA lowlife.

Cho wonders what has happened 18-months after the CFDA issued the guidelines.  She asks designer Max Azria whether he has ever seen a model who looked thin and told her that she needs to get help?  Azria indicates that he has often done so and the models now are less thin.  Throughout the video, Cho doesn’t bother discussing the reason why high-fashion models need to be so thin.  Anyone seriously dwelling over this issue will note that all cues point to the designers’ preferences.  So what is the bright idea of asking designers if they have taken some steps to take care of the problem?  All we are going to get are Karl Lagerfeld-like lies.

Cho digresses to the issue of people claiming that models are naturally thin.  Of course, some models are naturally thin but many are being forced to starve.  The central issue is why do they have to be very thin?  We have queers lusting after boys as the majority of the dominant fashion designers, and they are trying to get girl models who look like boys in their early adolescence.  This is why these girls need to be very thin.  I will be skiing in Hell before CNN admits this.

Cho says that there has been a return of the curvy supermodel, mentioning the recent appearance of Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campell in some major ad campaigns, and then says that Editors of fashion magazines call it an improvement.  This is a retarded statement.  Geriatric [by industry standards] former supermodels are being featured as a quirk and this won’t last for long.  An unusual event does not a long-term trend make.  In July of this year, Vogue Italia released an issue full of predominantly sub-Saharan African models and it sold very well.  Some people were hailing this as a rebuttal to the notion that “black faces on magazine covers don’t sell the magazine” and saying that there should be no excuse for the rare use of African models in advertising.  The Vogue Italia issue sold well because of it freak novelty.  If the magazine regularly started featuring lots of African models one wonders how long will it be before it goes out of circulation.

And some wonder why it is that the mainstream media keep losing their audience.

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More on the 2009 Spring NY fashion week

An AP report claims that the 2009 Spring NY fashion week featured more size 2 and 4 models than in the recent past. This may very well be, but I’d like to comment on some excerpts, mostly from Nian Fish.

“I think there’s progress,” said Fish, creative consultant for KCD Worldwide, which produces fashion shows and events. “The girls are still slim. We didn’t want them not to be slim. We wanted a projection of health.”

Hon, a one-time minor change is not proof of progress. Under pressure, designers may add more size 2 and 4 models when they are likely to be especially scrutinized, namely during fashion week, but otherwise, as in magazine photoshoots, it will be business as usual.

Because of the [CFDA] initiative, some models were identified as having an eating disorder, referred for treatment and are back on the runways, Fish said. Some who didn’t look healthy weren’t used.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

There has been some pressure for designers to increase their model size to a 6, but the designers prefer models whose modest curves don’t compete with the clothes, Fish said.

Okay hon, I grant you this. But what, pray, explains the typical boyish looks of the models? There is surely no shortage of thin girls with girlish looks.

London recently dropped its plan to require medical exams for models because of a lack of international support.

Lack of support on whose part? The queer designers’!

“Thin is going to be the ruling look — until someone says, ‘I want voluptuous,’” said Fish. “I don’t know if that ever is going to come back.”

Well, I say I want voluptuous, but nothing happens. The ‘someone’ needs to be a large number of fashion designers, and being of the non-queer variety, they will have to form their own alternative fashion industry.

Eating disorders groups have recommended requiring adult models to have a body mass index of at least 18.5 — the lower limits of a normal weight — and an independent medical certification affirming that they do not suffer from an eating disorder. “They do drug testing for sports. Why? To keep competition clean but hopefully also to save lives. That’s what we want, too,” said Lynn Grefe, CEO of the National Eating Disorders Association.

But such measures are called Draconian by Dr. Susan Ice, a medical director for an eating disorders treatment center and member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America health initiative.

For now, the goal is simply to raise awareness, said CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg. “I think that it’s a good thing to do it the way we’re doing it as opposed to throwing those poor girls on a scale and terrifying them even more,” she said.

Raise awareness? You mean that the models don’t know that they are very thin and need to eat in a healthy manner? This clown tries to make it look like it is the fault of the models.

As a new model at 15, Coco Rocha said she went to Singapore and lost 10 pounds in six weeks. When she returned to the U.S. she was so obsessed with food, she beat herself up over eating an apple. “I’ll never forget the piece of advice I got from people in the industry when they saw my new body,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “They said, ‘You need to lose more weight. The look this year is anorexia. We don’t want you to be anorexic but that’s what we want you to look like.’”

How does one look anorexic without starving?

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