Skinny Celebrity Images Portray Dangerous Messages

The Daily Mail reported yesterday on a mother’s request after loosing her daughter to anorexia that scarily skinny images should carry a health warning. The mother believed it was images of skinny celebrities that drove her daughter to this dangerous eating disorder.

The images so regularly printed in all media channels speak of how unhealthy the pictures are but “by focusing on their thinness  -  to the exclusion of all else  -  the publishers of such photos are feeding our dangerous national obsession with weight.”

“Small wonder that growing numbers of teenagers are falling prey to eating disorders, when role models in magazines exhibit their jutting bones and attenuated limbs while breezily declaring they’ve barely noticed their dangerously diminishing size.

Alarmingly, in the unattainable world of the super-rich celebrity the measure of what is an acceptable size is shrinking. Four years ago, the death of size-zero model Luisel Ramos from heart failure during Uruguay’s fashion week sparked a worldwide debate on the scandal of our starving models  -  apparently she hadn’t eaten for days when she arrived for her appearance on the runway  -  and at the same time set an insidious new benchmark.

Since her death, the fashion industry has made half-hearted attempts to introduce ‘real’ women with curves and flesh on their bones on to the catwalk. So, now and then, we do see a properly rounded female form glowing with good health in fashion shows and magazines. But I fear it is merely tokenism: for every size 12 woman on the catwalk or in the magazines read by millions of young women  -  and Heaven help us, even this is below the average British dress size  -  we see a dozen skeletal ones.

So the ‘real’ women are the exception to a rule, which demands more and more freakish levels of slenderness. The fashion industry has set a dangerous trend and celebrities are not only imitating it, but exceeding it. It cannot be long before we see clothes on the High Street labelled in minus sizes.”

Do you believe images should carry a health warning? Would the same not apply to beauty product advertising and the extreme amount of airbrushing that occurs? What really needs to be done to make a change to the images we see in fashion and beauty? If you want to help make a change please sign our petition and please leave your comments below.

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