Ms.Halverson
English II
Fighting the reproduction of skin-and-bone Models:
Resolution for Healthier Body Weight among Fashion Models
In an interview conducted by Tara Kelly she asked Crystal Renn about her past struggles with eating disorders and how it all began. “When I was 14 years old, my mother put me in an etiquette beauty school. One day a scout came up to me and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, you're going to be the next supermodel.’ I didn't even know what that meant. He pulled out a picture of Gisele and said, ‘This is who you can be.’ But he said I had to lose nine inches off my hips. That was the beginning (Plus-Size Supermodel).” Crystal Renn was an unknown size-0 model who moved to New York from Clinton, Mississippi to make it big. She struggled with her weight for years however, and finally made the bold decision to switch to plus sized modeling. Her weight once dropped down to 95 lb. on a 5 ft. 9 in. frame. Now healthy, she is the highest paid plus sized model in the world (Plus-Size Supermodel). Unlike many other models Renn made it out of this brutal cycle. A model (from Middle French modèle) is a person who is employed for the purpose of displaying and promoting fashion products and for advertising or promotional purposes (Model Wikipedia). The size of models over the years has changed from more curvaceous to “a good clothes hanger” as Lisa Fonssagrives (a popular model/dancer from the 1930s) described herself, but unlike a number of the models today she most likely didn’t starve herself. The average Body Mass Index (height to weight ratio) of an American person in the 1990s was 28.1 while an emerging models BMI at the same point was usually 16 (Female Body Shape in the 20th Century). This may have happened because, as suggested by “Ann Bolin, an anthropologist at Elon College suggests that ‘during periods of liberation, like the 1920s, when women had just gotten the vote, and the 1960s, when the Pill became available, the ideal