Skinny and Naked:
What a Woman Should Be

By Lesley C. Perez, 10.11.2006

The fashion world has recently made great strides to join the reality the rest of us live in. The ban on ultra skinny models in Madrid a few weeks ago shocked an industry that glorifies sickness as beauty. I commend the change.

I also challenge the industry’s self-examination of misconstrued ideals to continue.

While the issue of weight has long been a criticism of the industry, the fact that sex sells has slid by without objection. Gradually the clothes have slithered off young models while the makers of cars and perfumes scramble for extra pockets to store their cash.

Actually, clothes are disappearing from advertisements at an alarming rate. Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’re flipping through a magazine when you stumble across a page picturing a naked pair wrapped in each other’s arms. Confused, you try to figure out what the ad is for or if it’s an ad at all. It’s not until you read the fine print at the bottom that you realize this bare entanglement is for a pair of jeans. “Odd,” you think as you continue flipping pages. “I didn’t see any jeans in the picture.”

Television has also unsurprisingly hopped onto this birthday suit bandwagon. This season’s premiere of “America’s Next Top Model” stands out as a prime example. In the episode, Tyra and her androgynous crew commanded 33 girls to drop their tops (and everything else) for their first photo shoot. Without a product in sight, these girls were asked to “model” on a rooftop. They were told that in order to make it as a model they needed to be comfortable in their skin and this, apparently, was the only way to prove it.

According to Merriam Webster, a model is defined as “one who is employed to display clothes or other merchandise” and to model something means “to display by wearing, using or posing with.”

What exactly are you modeling in a “feel comfortable in your skin” photo shoot?

Without a product, young girls are not being asked to model at all, at least not by definition. The last I knew, someone who models naked is a porn star or a playboy at best.

Yes, folks, the line between pornography and modeling has long ago been blurred. It seems that the industry has slipped passed us another unconscious ideal. Not only are women supposed to be skinny, but they’re also supposed to freely share their skinny selves with the world.

The result? A generation of “Girls Gone Wild.” Teen pregnancy, low self-esteem, child molestation, distorted body image – the list goes on and we wonder why. Could it be that sexual objectification of women has serious repercussions after all?

The challenge we now face as a society is how to restore a sense of inner beauty and self-respect to a generation that trades virtue for 15 cheap minutes of fame.

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