Being a major fashion organization you hold certain responsibilities. Many people look to you to set the standards. Throughout time, models have had the stigma of portraying an unrealistic and frankly unhealthy body image. Although things are starting to improve, a huge change still needs to be made. As a leader in the industry you should be a pioneer for this movement. You have begun to make an effort but I’m afraid it’s not enough. The health initiative you laid forth in 2007 placed some guidelines for fashion designers to instill protection for the health of models. You state that “Designers share a responsibility to protect women, and very young girls in particular.” The guidelines state that there’s a recommendation for designers to create a healthy environment by referring models with eating disorders for professional help and protecting underage girls by hiring models no younger than 16. That’s the problem though, it’s a recommendation (Furstenberg, “CFDA Health Initiative”). Your guideline makes no true effort to implement these solutions, they are merely voluntary. On top of that you offer no guidelines for minimum BMIs or any mandatory medical evaluations. Providing help for eating disorders is fine and dandy but maybe you should start with combatting the problem before it reaches that stage.
After an increasing string of models dying from anorexia many fashion capitals such as Madrid implemented a system of health examinations and a requirement to have a BMI of 18 at the minimum. Even so the World Health Organization classifies someone as underweight with a BMI of 18.5 (Rodenbough, “Fashion Industry Promotes Eating Disorders”). These efforts are a start but the minimums already set forth a standard of being abnormally skinny. The CFDA couldn’t even be bothered to implement that pathetic bottom line. Trying to preach a concern for young women and models’ health doesn’t matter when you don’t really change anything.
Your president Diane Von Furstenberg heads up the health initiative and has been advocating for healthier body images, yet designer’s sample sizes continue to decline. As the average sample sizes get smaller and smaller so do the models so that they fit these expectations (Sieczkowski, “New York Fashion Week 2012: New CFDA Guidelines Cull Underage, Underweight Models”). Despite these efforts to improve health, models are actually getting skinnier. In the past 20 years the average fashion model has jumped from weighing 8% less than the average woman to weighing 23% less. Plus sizes have shifted from meaning size 12 to 18 to meaning between size 6 and 14 (Jones, “Plus Size Bodies, What Is Wrong With Them Anyway?“). Not only do these standards put models at health risk but have damaging effects on the public. Whether or not you want to take responsibility for how the public responds you have to admit there’s a pattern. It’s true that women aren’t forced to comply to your image but when rail thin models are constantly shoved in everyone’s faces as what’s considered “beautiful” it’s hard not to feel less than when you look like more than. In hindsight, fashion designers do somewhat force women to comply to these standards though. 50% of women wear a size 14 or larger yet most designers only sell size 14 and smaller (Jones et al.). That’s half, a full half, of women that are being alienated from popular brands, being made to feel abnormal when the size 0 most the models sport is what’s truly abnormal.
It’s not only adult women that are affected but these ideals are detrimental to young girls growing up, believing that they have to be skinny to be pretty. The National Eating Disorders Association states that 81% of ten year olds are afraid of being fat. That 46% of 9-11 year olds are on a diet while 42% of 1st-3rd graders wish they were thinner (NEDA, “Get The Facts On Eating Disorders”). Those are very young children that are being brainwashed into this conformity before they’re old enough to truly understand it. This asinine ideal being set forth by the fashion industry severely affects women’s self-esteem, even before they’re old enough to love themselves in the first place. The fact that the CFDA rarely speaks out on these issues, and actually refuses to answer questions or offer a comment on this epidemic is extremely problematic (Rodenbough et al.). The blame doesn’t rest solely on your shoulders but being a respected and widely regarded organization means you have an obligation to make an effort to change things. Maybe you don’t even realize what your silence is doing to the issue, and that may be more problematic in itself. By being an important part of the fashion community and not taking steps to promote a healthier body image for women, you’re making it more acceptable for other designers to keep doing the same thing and portraying the idea that you don’t truly care about your models' and consumers' health, no matter how much you preach you do.
Things won’t change overnight but you can do a lot more to accelerate the efforts than simply making blanket suggestions. Continuing these standards puts the fashion models at serious health risks and in turn perpetuating unhealthy habits in women of the world. I myself am very passionate about clothing and think fashion has so much to offer, but this is one issue that needs to be resolved immediately. Fashion design is an art form that shouldn’t be causing harm. If you truly care about the health of women all around then the CFDA needs to make a bigger effort towards changing the stigmas. Fashion should be something that women are taught to have fun with and express themselves, not something that places them in a size 4 box.
Sincerely, Georgia Warrick
For this piece I did a lot of research on the CFDA and the psychological effects of the fashion industry on women. I was originally going to display all of the facts in a diagram describing health concerns for models, and the effect that has on the female consumers. During my research I came across one article about the fashion industry promoting eating disorders that mentioned how many designers dispelled this issue and repelled any blame. One of those organizations was the CFDA, who refused to comment on the issue for the article. I decided to look into that, being that they’re a prominent group, and discovered that they started a model health initiative. It’s great that they’ve laid out health guidelines for models, but it is extremely lackluster. I realized that even though they preached the importance of women’s health, in and out of the industry, they did little to help. Their guidelines are simply that, guidelines. They’ve made no such effort to enforce these rules and even then the guidelines only brush the surface of the issue. This really perturbed me and I realized the facts I had would be more effective in a letter addressing the CFDA. After all, they seem to be on the right track but they needed to be pushed to do more and see the problems with their current solution. Since the CFDA’s apathy on the topic irritated me so much it seemed only right to create a letter rather than just stating the facts. For research I looked more into the CFDA’s official health regulations. Then I dug into statistics on how models are pressured to be skinny from PLUS Model Mag and the amount of normal women that feel those same pressures, from different MEL articles, and statistics from NEDA. I’m happy with how this letter turned out. I think it conveys my message and makes a compelling case to the CFDA while presenting the general public the disturbing yet true facts to alert everyone of the problem. I also think the letter hits harder and evokes a more emotional response than a diagram ever could.