Well, here’s something you don’t hear everyday… or ever, for that matter. According to news reports, organizers of Spain’s top annual fashion show have booted five models from this year’s event because they are considered… “too thin.” What? Stop the world from spinning. Did I read that correctly? “Too SKINNY?”
The news is true. In fact, the decision to reject the skinny models was made unilaterally by event organizers who made it a rule that women below a predetermined body mass index would not be allowed to strut their stuff (what little they have) down the catwalk. Fashion show organizers told reporters that two highly regarded doctors, Susana Monereo of Spain’s National Endocrinology Society and Basilio Moreno, an obesity consultant at Gregorio Maranon Hospital, were among the specialists called on to medically assess the models before the decision to reject them was made. According to news reports: “Five of the 68 models who showed up for appraisal failed the test. The models were over 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed less than 121.25 pounds.” The doctors who examined the models said that the ones that didn’t make the cut had a body mass index “below, well below, that which is considered normal not just by the Spanish endocrinology society, whom we represent, but also by the limits set by the World Health Organization.”
The prestigious fashion show, which begins tomorrow, implemented the new weight rules in an effort to project an image of “beauty, elegance and health.” Event organizers also banned makeup that makes models appear sickly. “Clearly we don’t want walking skeletons,” show organizers told reporters.
The other factor that led to the new stipulations is the fact that last year’s show drew protests from medical associations and women’s advocacy groups because “some of the models were positively bone-thin.” Enter the Madrid regional government, which decided to pressure organizers to “hire fuller-figured women as role models for young girls obsessed with being thin.”
It’s a trend one Spanish official says she hopes will continue:
“The fashion industry’s promotion of beauty as meaning stick thin is damaging to young girls’ self-image and to their health,” Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said in a statement. “Young girls aspire to look like the catwalk models – when those models are unhealthily underweight it pressurizes girls to starve themselves to look the same.”
Who would have ever thought the day would come that a model would be banned from a show because she was too thin? It’s cause for celebration—wouldn’t you agree?
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