Skin And Bone

I still feel sad for the very young women I saw in The magazine, walking the latest  fashions down the ramp of a famous designer. Their pathetically thin upper thigh, knee and collar bones were poking out of the skin tightly stretched over them caused spontaneous groans of sadness from me. How could anyone enjoy the fashions, no matter how gorgeous, they carried draped loosely on their hauntingly death camp  thinness. Every one of the girls, because that's what they were, made up girls, showed dangerously underweight bodies. One young woman looked near death. Their unsmiling faces although prompted to be so, made the whole effect even more frightening. And all I could feel was  tragedy. The magazine, that displayed this feature, lauded the event as being the top of the year.  Male models also live with this kind of measuring tool that makes anorexia look normal but I suspect that these models are close to their own demise or will be if they continue starvation. What concerns me is their influence on future generations of fashion lovers and those who make their living by its profits. It seems to me some years ago, the industry stopped this insane quest for bone thinness. There was a move toward more rounded shapes in models and decent dietary modes. I suppose over the next few years, it segued back to this foolish need to be skinny and the false claim that skinny is beautiful. It's not. Take a certain very rich Canadian singer of an age who looks gaunt and terribly ill. She, an entertainer was always slender but now she is ugly thin.  There is a difference between thin and skinny. Neither are attractive or natural. It is fair to say that the closer clothing models appear to be a wire coat hanger, the more the fashion mavens want to snap them up. They go to great lengths to hunt for the young and vulnerable who are tall, long boned and skinny luring them with tales about the riches and fame of becoming a top model. They don't warn them of the hazards that include long hours, intense travel and time frames. The whole move toward being skinny, has caused a society that focuses on thinness under the guise of health. Thus the rise of jogging, gyms and yoga. Healthy eating is having a balanced diet with plenty of fresh food from a wide range. It includes fats and sugars in moderation and not extended protein-only eating or any other kind of unnatural habit to lose weight instead of simply watching what we eat. What I saw in the pages of this magazine were young people, women and men, caught in the bondage of modeling fashion.  Media influences almost every aspect of modern life and fashion dictates are major in a "me" society. How we look is what we are and how we feel about ourselves and others. A healthy body glows with a good diet and appropriate exercise. And it has nothing to do with measuring tapes and scales. Thin and skinny are not beautiful, healthy is.