NORRISTOWN - When plus-size supermodel Emme was twice named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People," the honor went a long way in demolishing the stereotype that a woman needs to be thin to be considered beautiful.
But with the number of eating disorders and profits for the diet industry at an all-time high, the best-selling author and erstwhile host of E! Entertainment Television's "Fashion Emergency" came to Norristown Area High School on Thursday to discuss the ongoing horrors of the modern obsession with body image.
"There was a breakout session after the hour lecture and those 800 kids were so respectful and so engaged you could have heard a pin drop," said the woman born Emme Aronson in New York City in 1963.
Several hours after the event, the residual excitement churning in the voice over the cell phone was unmistakable. "This is my life's work," said Aronson, the author of several books on body image issues. "I'm consistent with the message, and I love connecting to kids and breaking through false stereotypes and filling them with power and knowledge."
The students got to revel in Aronson's passion and knowledge thanks to the graciousness of "A Chance to Heal Foundation," a nonprofit organization working to prevent eating disorders through awareness and education.
The Jenkintown-based group was founded two years ago by Rachel Silver and her mother Ivy, following Rachel's bout with an eating disorder.
"Emme is such an incredible role model, and I have to tell you that the feedback we've been getting is all about how warm and gracious she was and how she made everyone more aware of these issues," Ivy Silver noted. "The school was so accommodating and very much a part of it. We had called them up about doing this and they saw the value in the agenda." With steroid use on the rise in teenage boys, dissatisfaction with self-image is not strictly a female problem, Silver added. "It can affect boys too, although that's not generally known," she said.
Aronson had encouraged the audience to ask as many questions as possible.
"I said, 'Look, we're all in this together. So if you have a question you've got to get that hand up.' So one went up, then another," she noted.
A student wanted to know if Aronson ever envied skinny women.
"I told them it takes training like a dog to train yourself to realize that we are diversified," she said. "If you can imagine all the flowers in the world being exactly the same, wouldn't that be a bummer? It's only marketing, consumerism and capitalism that makes us feel that we're not right, because it's making people money. They don't want to talk about the inhumane situation they've created with people dying to be thin. It makes people totally self-obsessed, and that makes money for them."
A diet-related industry that's based on 98 percent failure rate is raking in $50 billion a year, Aronson explained.
"I say, how many kids could we send to college with that money if we understood that there was such a false message at the end of the rainbow ... that their promise that you will find your perfect life after lose 10, 20 or even 100 pounds are gone is sending totally wrong information."
Aronson, a devoted fitness enthusiast, said a loss of 20 pounds two years ago was motivated by the pursuit of improved health, not a smaller dress size.
"In my situation, I had a baby in 2001 and was doing spin classes like a crazy woman and just leveling off," she said. "So I lessened the intensity, got out of spinning and more into Pilates and elliptical work, and what happened? I lost 20 pounds over a year, that I needed to lose for health reasons."
It took her "years and years and years" of frustration with dieting and emotional eating to make peace with the tape measure and the scale, Aronson said.
"Once you finally have a point of reference to your true self and your value outside of a dress size on the back of a garment," she allowed, "and once you can find something about yourself that is the true value, losing or gaining weight is not going to make a bit of difference."
Gary Puleo can be reached at 610-272-2500, ext. 205, or at gpuleo@timesherald.com.
