Why Did Miss Moss Really Read Feed Me?

At first glance, the “Feed Me” photograph presents an enigma. Like millions of other images spread across Vogue, Town & Country, on billboards and the sides of buses, this one is typical as far as high fashion photographs go. But wait -- that girl is familiar! She is Kate Moss, certainly makes a decent income, why does the text around her photo read “Feed Me”?

To answer that question, one needs to look at the beginning of Miss Moss’s career. She was born on January 16, 1974 in the United Kingdom and “discovered” in 1988 while at JFK airport in New York. The 1980’s were coming to a close, and fashion was moving from excessive, big-haired and gold accentuated to a look sometimes referred to as “heroin chic”. With her “waifish” physique, Kate Moss was the perfect embodiment of this new trend. The “Feed Me” photo is a classic example: with her hair pulled back severely, one’s focus is drawn to her face and her hollow cheekbones have a strange prominence. Could she really be starving?

Compare the photo of Miss Moss to those displayed in television ads by organizations such as Save the Children or UNICEF that plead for people to sponsor starving children throughout the world. While the photographs bear a frightening resemblance, this is not the
In 2006 and in response to growing concerns about the effect media has on body image of young girls and women, the government of Madrid, which sponsors the fashion shows held during Madrid’s fashion week, banned models with too low of a BMI from modeling in the shows. In 2012, Israel enacted legislation setting a minimum BMI for models. France followed in 2015. Also in 2015, Mackay reported that the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned a Yves Saint Laurent ad “featuring a model who it said was “unhealthily underweight.”” Even Barbie is getting with the times. Mattel, the company that makes the doll, has added “curvy, tall and petite” sizes to their Barbie