"We don't see anorexic," Karl Lagerfeld said recently of the models in his haute world. "The girls are skinny. They have skinny bones."
This was moments after a Chanel show where a two-dimensional icon fell under the weight of sequined underwear masquerading as pants. Designers are not to blame for the too-thin trend, the emperor of fashion protested. "No, that is something to sell papers."
This would be the same Lagerfeld who once kept "a permanent cheese-mountain on his desk" according to Alicia Drake's addictive history of 1970s fashion, The Beautiful Fall. He subsequently lost 90 pounds in 13 months, and published a diet book advocating diet Coke but no exercise, coupled with such haute platitudes as "a respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul" and "fashion is the healthiest motivation for losing weight."
Giorgio Armani said, "I do not feel responsible for setting a trend towards models who look anorexic," though he sent out women with wire-hanger torsos. "I want the dresses to seem to float and flow with the body."
How to reconcile the notion that models and celebrities have never been thinner while obesity flourishes, not only in America but all over the globe? Almost a third of French citizens are overweight, and a quarter of the Japanese; even India is battling fat.
The operative word in Lagerfeld's statement is, of course, "girls." Models and actresses have historically been thin. What's new is that they're barely legal, of that evanescent age when you can eat anything and the body usually forgives.
Eating disorders are epidemic - gorging, denial, both. Of course, charting them is new, too. Historically, women have done many dumb things to reduce their appearance. To kill appetite, they smoked through everything, even pregnancy, and donned undergarments that barely permitted breathing, let alone eating.
Now, the weapon is food. "The culture doesn't allow for a lot of diverse ways of being," says Jane Shure, a psychologist specializing in eating disorders and a Chance to Heal board member. "We're putting ourselves down. There's a competition going on among many people, with a layer of icky female stuff where women boast about what they didn't have to eat."
For ages, food was work, control of food production meant wealth, and choice was rare. Only the rich could afford fat. Today, it's more likely to be the poor suffering from obesity.
Curiously, eating disorders arrived at a time when there's never been so much food of high quality. Perhaps we don't eat, or don't eat correctly, because we can. We're bombarded with images of impossible ideals that can foster deprivation in one set of people, and I-give-up-pass-the-Whopper in another.
Several factors are not helping. Most designers dictating trends are male and rarely, if ever, come into contact with women over 30 or size 4. While America ages, the people employed to sell products are getting younger. Many Americans live too sedentary lives, residing in cubicles and traffic, cut off from fresh air and moving our bodies. Our senses are deprived, and altogether too much food epitomizes such misery.
The tendency to eat junk - "numbing ourselves with food," Shure calls it - seems another example of Americans' unhappiness, coupled with an epidemic culture of complaint about appearance, especially among women.
When did it become acceptable to carp about one's looks or diet as a career? Consider the millions of refused desserts, the endless number of conversations wasted on dieting, and altogether too much lettuce.
Good food is synonymous with pleasure, generosity, fulfillment. The better food is, the less is required to satisfy. To deny all this, to turn away so much bounty, is to stunt experience and live largely in abeyance, all for the pursuit of an impossible ideal of a teenage ectomorph in sequined underwear masquerading as pants.
On Nov. 8, a Chance to Heal will host a conversation with model Emme about body image and beauty. For more information, www.achancetoheal.org or 215-885-2420. Contact staff writer Karen Heller at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com.
