Indianapolis StarOnly waifs need applyUltra-thin models still hog spotlight on runway, but some fight trend October 9, 2006 "They all wanted me to lose weight," said Hunter, after a trip to the Big Apple in search of a modeling contract. Recent news about ultra-thin models being banned from Madrid Fashion Week and of the striking number of such models during Fashion Weeks in New York, London and Paris garnered knowing glances from several Indianapolis-based models and actresses. Hunter said she refused to sign with New York agencies that insisted she lose weight first. She eventually signed with the Elite Agency there and is represented locally by the Helen Wells Agency. "I'd rather be happy and healthy than halfway dead," said Hunter. Echo Shappell, a 23-year-old actress and former PBS television host in Bloomington, recalled a week she spent in Los Angeles several years ago working with the Channel One network, which produces in-school television features. Shappell stands 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs 145 pounds. "I was appalled by how people were eating, even people who were not on camera," said Shappell, who is studying at IUPUI and is represented locally by Artistic Enterprises. "Size 8 is not the norm out there. It was size 2." Linda Wells, editor of the magazine Allure, told The New York Times there were moments during New York Fashion Week when she could hear gasps in the audience at the appearance of some models. "What becomes alarming is when you see bones and start counting ribs," Wells said. Yet, according to The Times, designers seem to prize an ever-thinner frame to display their clothes. Some who attended the New York shows question whether acceptable boundaries have been crossed, as when fashion glamorized images of heroin abuse in the early 1990s. Despite perennial complaints that models are too thin, there is a new sense of concern that designers are contributing to unhealthy and potentially life-threatening behavior among models vying to appear in their shows. Designer Karl Lagerfeld, however, recently dismissed such concerns, telling CNN.com, "We don't see anorexic girls." Indianapolis-based Betsy Hamlett, 26, has been modeling for about a decade and had brief stints on the runway in New York, Miami and London. She still carries no more than 130 pounds on her 5-foot-11-inch frame. "They intend for (an outfit) to look how it looks on a hanger, except it's moving," she said. Dan McQuiston, a marketing professor at Butler University, says the models represent a variation on an old theme. Instead of "sex sells," it's "thin is in." Ultra-thin models are just expected in high-fashion circles, he says. But he worries about the effect of such images on impressionable young women when they are held up as an ideal. "I've got two teenage girls," McQuiston said. "When girls are from their early teens to their early 20s, they're very influenced by that." The empirical research on the negative impact of these images is mixed. Most reports that support a link between ultra-thin models and eating disorders start with young women who already have such conditions as anorexia and bulimia. A widely disseminated 1999 study by Dr. Eric Stice of the University of Texas and others found that only young women who had a pre-existing dissatisfaction with their bodies were negatively affected by images of ultra-thin models and actresses, for example. And a 2004 Purdue University review by Amanda J. Holmstrom of several earlier studies concluded that depictions of thin women on TV had little to no effect on viewers, though images of overweight women had a positive effect on women's body image. Then there is the "demand side" of the marketing equation: A recent Bath University survey of 470 women found that two-thirds of women surveyed preferred thin models to "normal" body types in ads. Diana Ruschhaupt, director of programs at the Ruth Lilly Health Education Center, disputes whether ultra-thin models or Hollywood personalities are that influential, though she does not like the messages about ideal body type they project. "I think it's a big can of worms," said Ruschhaupt. "As far as Hollywood goes, I think some youth know it's 'airbrush this and airbrush that.' They know these models look a lot different in person. Others have a hard time distinguishing fiction from fact." The bigger influence on body image, diet and exercise, Ruschhaupt said, continues to be found in the home, not on the runway, TV or in fashion magazines. This partly explains the far higher incidence of obesity in teens than anorexia or bulimia, she said. There are signs that Madison Avenue, at least, if not the world of haute couture, is responding to demands for more normal body images in advertising. Last year, Dove beauty products launched a U.S. ad campaign, dubbed "Real Beauty," that features women of various body shapes and weights, clothed only in their underwear. "We have new styles of beauty being defined as a reaction to the decades of supernatural beauty associated with supermodels," industry trend watcher Marian Salzman told USA Today. Former Miss Indiana Susan Guilkey is all for this new generation of ads. "I think it's about focusing on being healthy, not being thin," she said.
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