Fatal Consumption

Isn't it amazing how absurd people can be, the values they isolate as having true meaning to embellish and make their lives worthwhile? The trivial, the superficial, the absorption of young women with facade could lead a casual observer from outer space to the conclusion that they're capable of reaction, devoid of thought. But they're like that simply because it works for them, and because the world at large accepts and admires these trivialities.

We all have an ego, and we submit to it in varying measures in different ways from time to time. We're human. There are shared societal values, augmented by those which parents inculcate into their children to ensure they're well rounded in their worldly outlook. All right, that's the ideal, and peer pressure along with certain social mores which have minimal value do exert their appeal.

Still, obviously self-destructive decisions and activities which are adopted by people who have had the benefit of a reasonable education - living in a world of variable choices, many of which really are life-enhancing - seem to attract young women to a tenuous lifestyle of brief acclaim and flirtation with the grim reaper.

In an industry dominated by men who design wearable creations for women upon whose slender frames their dresses do their genius justice, there is an echo of malicious male chauvinism. A penchant for selecting, and setting up for public admiration and acclaim young women whose post-adolescent frames tweaked by excessive dieting resemble a childish physicality so attractive to pedophiles.

And just incidentally, the clothing designed for wealthy clients, few of whom are themselves naturally of a physically-slight frame and themselves subject to self-denial of physical maturity just 'hang well' on gaunt models. Young women with presence and physical attraction dream of a modelling life with all the attention, the earnings and glamour invested in the profession.

Since selected is heavily canted toward tall, slender young women whose womanly physical features are more hinted at than present, everyone who harbours such ambitions happily accepts the dietary strictures involved in keeping their bodies underweight. The recent deaths of aspiring young models directly attributed to the modelling-diet-exigencies of sacrificing bodily needs in the interests of achieving a malnourished appearance has its costs.

Anorexia and bulemia are the most visible symptoms of the disease of model-envy and aspirations. Young women and girls everywhere aspire to achieve that barely-there look to be able to flaunt their arrested-in-development bodies to the world at large, convinced of their sophistication and natural beauty - with sometimes-unfortunate consequences.

The self-absorption in achieving that look overtaking natural caution and intelligence is now recognized as a social/health disease, and anxious parents hang on the words of medical specialists, hoping they can convince their obdurate children that there exists a cornucopia of other values more worthwhile and more in accord with a wish to live well.

The conscience of the fashion industry is only now beginning to tweak itself into realizing their responsibility. But even while some within the industry admit their guilt in fashioning a generation of starved and sometimes fatally-ill modelling aspirants and successes, they're still wedded to the vision of their garments hanging carelessly, with beautifully fluid lines over a skeletal form.

Instead of accepting self-idolizing Lolitas consumed by their dissatisfied egos, the profession should do a turn-about and accept that the greater community of women upon whose support their industry depends does not resemble starved waifs. And women whose physical proportions don't remotely resemble the models wafting down a runway should demand of designers that clothing be created for those who wear them.