An image to heal - influence of models as a cause of eating disorders

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 1997 by Jill S. Zimmerman

Consequently, it's hardly surprising that we sometimes stumble upon magazine articles such as Vogue's "Nobody's Perfect," which disseminate a body-image message with a twist: even supermodels feel heaped with physical flaws and are slaves to their self-perpetuated myths. To the cynical, this could be construed as a marketing ploy to promote an even stronger identification between the average woman and the supermodel. But through my work with eating-disordered women, I've learned that models aren't invincible to poor body image.

An ironic example of this is Cindy Crawford. On the one hand, she's flippant in her attitude about models, impacts on eating disorders, on the other, her colleagues apparently affect her in much the same way that she affects my bulimic patient. For in spite of being acknowledged as a world-class beauty, Crawford admitted to Vogue that she felt "self-conscious of my arms, because I look at someone like Linda [Evangelista] and she has these little bird arms and they look great in clothes." Crawford also doesn't like the area right under her butt, "where the cellulite tends to come," and thinks that her feet are too wide. Evangelista, in turn, told interviewers that she covets Christy Turlington's mouth and would like to "remove two ribs - or just shrink the size of my rib cage."

Nadja Auermann, who "eats like a horse" (according to Tina Gaudoin) and who lost half her body weight before becoming a supermodel (according to the 1994 Vogue article "Platinum Hit") reportedly still has high anxiety about her weight. Auermann attributes this to her early experiences as a model in Paris: "Everybody made me paranoid. Everybody told me, `Nadja, you can't eat so much. You have to stop.' If I gained half a gram, I was like completely freaking out"

Glamour reported that supermodel Tyra Banks once canceled a job because of a "bloated stomach" and often thinks about holding in her stomach during shoots. Top Model, a magazine devoted to the promotion of models, disclosed that Victoria Secret's Stephanie Seymour - at five feet, nine inches, with perfect supermodel measurements of 34-24-34 - "thinks she's too fat and hates her buttocks." And Christy Turlington, my 19-year-old neighbor's favorite model and the star of Calvin Klein's recent underwear ads, told Vogue she had considered cosmetic surgery at one point: "I don't like my knees.... I hate my feet, they're just big and long and skinny... I have a beer belly." She concurs with Auermann that "fashion editors can be very cruel.... They constantly watch you and say, `Oh, look at your ass.' They do that all the time." Indeed, to highlight the plight of her fellow supermodels, Carol Alt was quoted in People as saying, "Anyone who thinks that society pressures women to live up to our image should think of what we have to go through to maintain that image." It's true: supermodels are ensnared with the rest of women in the sticky web of never feeling thin enough, of lacking the inner security of body acceptance. A supermodel's toil may culminate in a fabulous career, but the cost is often a well of inner unhappiness.