Some disturbing news from Brazil:
six young women have starved themselves to death in the last two months in Sao Paulo, a fashion capital that typically embraces the idea of, you know, models who
eat. The death of Ana Carolina Reston in particular—the 21-year-old model who collapsed during a fashion shoot—attracted a storm of media attention.
The New York Times cited Brazil’s surrender to "universal" beauty standards—read: sickly thin is in—and mused over the effect of international media. After all, Brazil once encouraged “having a little more flesh, distributed differently to emphasize the bottom over the top, the contours of a guitar rather than an hourglass, and most certainly not a twig.” But somehow, that's drastically changed. A once-unshakable Brazil now features a bulimic ballerina on a popular ABC soap; a magazine flags the headline, “Inside the Mind of an Anorexic.” Thankfully, there are steps in the right direction on this issue. Spain banned underweight models from its fashion week; soon after, Milan did the same. Sao Paulo is now pushing a health and anorexia awareness campaign through numerous media—print, broadcast, Internet, school assemblies—and requiring models in February’s Sao Paulo Fashion Week to show medical certificates. But, question is, can a fashion capital really remedy something like this? And closer to home, where even
actresses are wasting away, when will the New York fashion industry follow suit?
Some disturbing news from Brazil: six young women have starved themselves to death in the last two months in Sao Paulo, a fashion capital that typically embraces the idea of, you know, models who eat. The death of Ana Carolina Reston in particular—the 21-year-old model who collapsed during a fashion shoot—attracted a storm of media attention. The New York Times cited Brazil’s surrender to "universal" beauty standards—read: sickly thin is in—and mused over the effect of international media. After all, Brazil once encouraged “having a little more flesh, distributed differently to emphasize the bottom over the top, the contours of a guitar rather than an hourglass, and most certainly not a twig.” But somehow, that's drastically changed. A once-unshakable Brazil now features a bulimic ballerina on a popular ABC soap; a magazine flags the headline, “Inside the Mind of an Anorexic.” Thankfully, there are steps in the right direction on this issue. Spain banned underweight models from its fashion week; soon after, Milan did the same. Sao Paulo is now pushing a health and anorexia awareness campaign through numerous media—print, broadcast, Internet, school assemblies—and requiring models in February’s Sao Paulo Fashion Week to show medical certificates. But, question is, can a fashion capital really remedy something like this? And closer to home, where even actresses are wasting away, when will the New York fashion industry follow suit?
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