Fashion world

A blogger that goes by the name Skinny gurl has lately been targeted for criticism by the mainstream media, and her site was subjected to a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) by the hacker group Anonymous.  The mainstream media have managed to get rape and death threats sent the way of Skinny gurl.

The criticism stems from Skinny gurl comparing Kate Upton to a cow, “confidently lumbering up the runway like there’s a buffet at the end of it,” describing her as a “little piggie” with “huge thighs, NO waist, big fat floppy boobs, terrible body definition.”

Two instances of what is missing in mainstream media reporting.

Two anecdotes from the fashion world, involving Adriana Lima and Alek Wek, are discussed below.

This is a comment on a Daily Mail article by Amanda Platell on how the fashion world is insulting womanhood by using a man, Andrej Pejic, to model women’s clothes.

Stephanie Naumoska was a contestant in the Miss Universe-Australia pageant.  Her very thin figure generated controversy.  At 5-foot-11, she reportedly weighed in at 108 pounds.  One look at her and I knew that I needed to discuss her looks, but not because of her thinness.

At the recent Spring/Summer 2009 Paris Fashion Week, Jean Paul Gaultier had 51-year-old former high-fashion model Inès de la Fressange model one of his designs on the runway.

Here is a news item that has gotten some attention in the mainstream media.  Australian researcher Phillippa Diedrichs conducted a study that found that using very thin women models does not increase the likelihood of women buying the advertised product compared to using women within a healthy weight range.  The study involved making a series of advertisements for underwear, a haircare product and a party dress, modeled by a size-8 woman and a roughly size-12 woman.  See an example below.

Video time.

Readers brought these two examples to my attention.