Fuck Fashion

This model died whilst starving herself to gain acceptance by the likes of Anna Wintour.

The incident was not widely publicized in the U.S., and I found out about it more than a month after it happened, through a Russian-language Live Journal community devoted to feminist issues.

The fashion world thrives on its exclusivity. These people will turn around and sau, “so? It’s not for everyone. If she didn’t have the body for it [i.e. if she’s a fat pig], she shouldn’t have done it,” while completely ignoring the long-term negative effects of under-eating in general.

This woman was an adult, and nobody held a gun to her head, but these issues are symptomatic, and these “beauty” standards are bordering on the grotesque. There is a big difference between “gazelle-like” models and the obvious signs of an eating disorder which so many of these girls display. Make-up and re-touching can conceal and distort sallow skin, thinning hair, and protruding bones, but at the end of the day, you still have to live with yourself, and neither make-up, nor re-touching can obscure the way that desperate unhappiness has become a kind of commodity.

Even Miss Moss, my favourite “clothes-hanger,” has made a career out of looking grim. I don’t think Moss starves herself, I think drugs are the bigger issue here, but as much as I admire her certain photographs (particularly the nude ones), I don’t think it should be my duty, or anyone else’s, to look exactly like this woman.

Moss, I think, is beautiful. But so are other women who look nothing like Moss. She is not the standard, and this androginization of the female form, slicining off hips, butts, and anything else that might get in the way, should not be compulsory. Not even for the models themselves. Yep, that’s right. The fashion execs of Australia may be on to something here.

Some people will argue that beauty is beauty because it is exclusive and unattainable. I think beauty is beauty if you are in love with it. I think exclusivity becomes an issue when we attempt to package beauty and sell it, and position it as a standard rather than a quirk.

I also think there is a class issue buried in here. Remember, it’s the poor people in the West that are stuck consuming cheap, unhealthy food. And we must never look poor if we can help it, flirtations with ripped jeans notwithstanding.