Is the fashion industry deliberately trying to alienate women? Certainly looks like it.

By MIA FREEDMAN

Here is an image that Australian designer label Manning Cartel believes will make you want to rush out and buy their clothes:

What. The. Actual.

Now I like clothes very much. Very, very much. Too much it could be said. I buy way more clothes than the average woman. I am an excellent economic friend of the fashion industry. A good customer. I support them with my wallet far more often than I should. And yet in the most part, the fashion industry continues to flagrantly display utter contempt for women like me.

These disturbing and distressing images were sent to us by several horrified Mamamia readers who had seen them on the Manning Cartel email to which these women had subscribed, as fans of the brand. The model Manning Cartel cast – presumably out of a large pool of potential models – is emaciated to the point of looking skeletal. This is not an attack on this women, this is an objective fact.

I am not going to speculate on her health because that is something between this girl and her doctors. But how astonishing is it that nobody involved in this shoot stopped to say, “Hang on. This girl looks incredibly underweight. The clothes literally bunch and hang off her emaciated limbs, child-like torso and non-existant hips. Is that the message we want to send to our customers and the world about our brand?”

Nobody said that because on Planet Fashion, nobody thought it. To them – and we’re talking about dozens of people involved in the shoot and the marketing of the label – this is Fashion Normal. This is the way they think their brand is best portrayed – on the body of a girl who looks like a starving child.

How many times do we have to have this conversation, Fashion Industry? How many times? How many times do we have to tell you that the images you are feeding us are NOT OK? How many media explosions do you need? How much public outrage and pushback is required before you take off your stupid glasses and take a long hard look at what women are telling you?

It was only a few short months ago that one of your own – Marie Claire editor Jackie Frank – called bullshit on the use of a drastically emaciated and unhealthy looking model on the catwalk of Alex Perry’s show during fashion week. After first defending the use of the model, Perry quickly acknowledged that he had made a mistake by casting her and apologised.

On The Today show, Perry claimed his error was part of a bigger problem: “Everybody needs to get in this together. Everyone is complicit in this. You can’t say designers shouldn’t book those models… You know what, let’s say, model agencies shouldn’t have those models, magazines shouldn’t shoot those models, designers shouldn’t use those models.”

Too right. And you know what happened next?

NOTHING.

Other designers did not cancel this particular emaciated model from their shows during the remainder of fashion week. Cassi Van Den Dungen was followed down catwalks by many other sick-looking girls who also appeared in need of medical attention. Jackie Frank was immediately ostracised by others in the fashion media who closed ranks against her after she publicly expressed her concerns for the welfare of skinny models.

At the time – after Mamamia published a damning indictment of the fashion industry’s endless refusal to change their ways – one fashion magazine editor tried to tear me a new one on social media, claiming that ‘all this media negativity stirred up by certain people’ was toxic and damaging to the fashion industry. They were doing it tough enough in this economic climate, she insisted, and they needed support not criticism.

Oh please. That was my response then and I reiterate it now.

The fashion industry – enabled by a largely sycophantic fashion press – are their own worst enemy. By arrogantly refusing to address widespread community concerns about the images of women they use to portray their clothes – images that are designed to calibrate what we as a society see as glamorous and desirable – they are giving us all the middle finger. They’re saying they don’t care that they are participating in the perpetuation of dangerous, unhealthy and irresponsible ideals. Not our problem, they claim.

No, skinny models and photoshop don’t cause eating disorders. But it is widely understood by health professionals that the images of emaciated women upon which the fashion industry is built, have a disproportionate effect on those many women who are already vulnerable. Particularly young women.

Eating disorders – which cost our economy $52b and have the highest death rate of any mental illness – are just the tip of the body image iceberg. Negative body image is also linked to a rise in other mental illnesses including depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. It’s responsible for lower productivity and even obesity – many young girls and women are too intimidated to exercise for fear of having to expose bodies that society tells them are ‘not good enough’ at best, abnormal at worst.

I’ve repeatedly said that I don’t believe people in the fashion industry – including the fashion media – are malevolent. I simply believe they live in a parallel universe where there’s no such thing as too thin. And no such thing as moral responsibility.

So here’s an idea: if you want to reverse the downward spiral of magazine and fashion retail sales and keep your jobs and the jobs of your staff, pull your heads out of the sand and take a look around at women. Actual women not the starving models you employ and the photoshopped aliens you create on computers. These actual women are the ones whose dwindling purchases of your clothes and your magazines keep you employed. So listen to them when they tell you they’re sick of being told that size 0 is normal. It’s not. And by continuing to feed these images to us, you are risking not just the health and well-being of women but your own future employment.

The moral argument has never swayed you. Perhaps the economic one will.

Here are some images we wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more of: