With a BMI of 17.7, Kiwi model and athlete Liz Lamb would be unable to model for fashion companies in France. Photo / Red 11
With a BMI of 17.7, Kiwi model and athlete Liz Lamb would be unable to model for fashion companies in France. Photo / Red 11
Kiwi modelling agencies are unlikely to follow French moves to fatten up their catwalk talent.
It's a rainy autumn afternoon and patrons at a posh Parnell cafe are sheltering from the elements. It's iPhone and Prada territory - perfectly dressed punters sipping on juices made from roots and elderflowers.
Liz Lamb is right at home. Even against this backdrop of white teeth, unspoiled skin and impeccable clothes, the 23-year-old shines.
The New Zealand model, high-jump champion and honours student has the natural glow and poise that sells products and makes brands memorable. She is articulate, brainy and radiates good health.
Lamb loves good food and her blog Why So Healthy documents the science behind health food. She is undoubtedly fit and healthy but her body mass index is just 17.7, which means if she lived in France modelling agents could be sent to jail for hiring her.
In April the French Government passed a law that makes it illegal for agencies to employ models with a BMI 18 or under. Healthy BMI is set at 18.5-24.9. Agencies hiring girls with a BMI under 18 can be fined €75,000 ($105,423) and face up to six months in prison.
France has long been the domain of the stylish and skeletal. Paris Fashion Week is a parade of the skinny. Many of the models in last year's shows appeared to be skin and bone - knock knees, ribby chests, elbows and shoulders you could cut yourself on.
Tottering on sky-scraper heels, the impossibly thin young women parading up and down the flashbulb-flickered catwalks represented the unattainable ideal of French beauty.
But behind this facade lies a darker reality. France has long battled an epidemic of disordered eating. It has one of the lowest average BMI levels in the world (23.4 as opposed to New Zealand's 26.4).
It is estimated up to 40,000 French citizens have anorexia - the unattainable skinniness that proliferates in the media, creating a distorted version of what is normal weight.
The Government's moves to address this trend don't end with BMI. Other measures include fines of up to €100,000 ($153,000) and a year in prison for media outlets that feature images seen as "promoting" an anorexic physique. Another law makes it mandatory to indicate if any images have been Photoshopped to make subjects look thinner. Similar laws have been put in place in Italy, Spain and Israel.
Disordered eating is a New Zealand issue, too, and models feel the pressure to be skinny, but the Ministry of Health has no plans to introduce restrictions.
High-jumper Liz Lamb feels BMI is a somewhat reductive tool with which to analyse healthy weight. Photo / Dean Purcell
Gaylene Jakicevich is an Auckland psychologist who has treated a number of models who have had their lives torn apart by the pressure.
"Two were teenage girls whose lives and families were in significant turmoil as a result of their rapidly deteriorating mental and physical health," she says.
She says there is a direct correlation between images of ultra-thin figures and the modelling world's demand for this look, and disordered eating. "Representations of ultra-thinness as the ideal obviously detrimentally affect the way women view their bodies and also clearly contribute to what society believes is within the range of 'normal'.
"They can most certainly be inflammatory and can definitely be a contributing factor to disordered eating and other unhealthy behaviour."
It is obviously a contentious subject for modelling agencies. Top Auckland agency 62 Models did not want to comment on the issue, saying the French and the New Zealand markets were poles apart.
But Virginia Kellet, associate professor of psychology at Auckland University, disagrees. She says we live in a global community and the New Zealand modelling industry can't be viewed in isolation.
She says the trend towards extremes of thinness has grown. "Advertisers want difference, something edgy. This has manifested itself in skinniness. It's a troubling trend."
Disordered body image is common worldwide and it can lead to more than low self-esteem. An investigation of attitudes towards weight in New Zealand schools reveals that around a third of young people have experienced bullying around weight.
Does New Zealand need to put in place measures to help address this? And are our modelling agencies doing all they can to prevent eating disorders in the ranks of their professional models?
Lamb feels BMI is a somewhat reductive tool with which to analyse healthy weight. She studied the use of BMI when doing a joint commerce and science undergraduate degree and is wary about its use as a sole indicator of healthy weight. She is surprised at the French move.
"It interested me that I wouldn't be able to model there, given my BMI is under 18."
She feels genetics are behind the "model look" and it's not something people should aspire to. She says the ideal model physique can't and shouldn't be gained by measures like dieting.
Lamb has never felt any pressure to stay skinny and has not seen much evidence of this among her contemporaries.
She feels her agency, Red 11, looks out for their models and would intervene if any of them were displaying signs of unhealthy eating.
Peter Langford-Reid from Red 11 believes the moves in France are a good idea, but he doesn't feel New Zealand should follow suit.
He says the New Zealand fashion market doesn't clamour for extremes of thinness and that clients won't book a girl who is super skinny.
Liz Lamb. Photo / Red 11
But he believes agencies need to look out for their models.
"We have a responsibility to tell the girl and her mother or guardian if this [disordered eating] arises at any time while we are representing that model."
The modelling industry is subject to rumour and conjecture flies around about eating disorders, but he says this is the exception rather than the rule.
"I have only come across this with less than a handful of girls over 20 years. We monitor it, we involve the parents, we talk to the girls, we advise them to see a nutritionist; their family doctor," says Langford-Reid.
He says girls can recover with help from their support network. "By working through it with everyone on board you get the result.
"The unfortunate thing with an eating disorder is that it doesn't discriminate."
Marama Nicholas, director of the international Clyne agency in New Zealand, agrees that very skinny models are more in demand in Europe and that the moves in France and other countries are a good first step.
"I think it is great the industry is looking to make steps into promoting a 'healthier image'.
"BMI may not necessarily be the medium by which this model standard is most efficiently measured, but it is a starting point and may be a positive step," he says.
Nicholas doesn't expect New Zealand will follow suit by policing the BMI of models and also contends the local industry looks for different things in their models.
"Our requirements and basic fit model are different here and tend to be a size larger, anyway."
He says Clyne wants models to be healthy, but within industry guidelines.
"Models are very similar to professional athletes or dancers. It is an industry requirement for these professions to maintain their physique via specific exercise and dietary regimes and one which is catered to the individual."
The ballet world also has a reputation for promoting dangerous ideals of skinniness. The movie Black Swan cast this in sharp relief, portraying a skeletal Natalie Portman's vertiginous descent into anorexia and insanity.
Leading ballerina Mariafrancesca Garritano was fired from the renowned Italian La Scala ballet company in 2012 for claiming the school pushed her and other students into severe body dysmorphia and eating disorders.
Her claims fit a 2006 study conducted by psychologists from leading United States universities that concluded that 84 per cent of the ballet dancers they interviewed met the criteria for eating disorders.
The artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Francesco Ventriglia, also danced for La Scala.
He has come across dancers with eating disorders throughout his career but says it is uncommon.
"If a dance company has a dancer with an eating disorder this is a problem," he says. "If a dancer is very underweight and not eating well they will be prone to injury, will tire easily and won't be able to maintain the gruelling touring schedules."
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is careful with their dancers' health and has a nutritionist to help them make informed decisions about what they eat.
But he acknowledges this isn't the norm."The RNZB is one of the only companies in the world that provides this."
He contends that the extremely lean physique of the dancers is due to years of exacting training, not dieting, and that this is normal for any athlete.
"Dancers are artists and athletes - they jump, run, turn, wear point shoes - this kind of work builds the bodies that they have."
Spokespeople from the New Zealand modelling and ballet communities may contend eating disorders aren't a major issue, but the proliferation of images of extreme thinness can be damaging in general society.
Julie Radford-Poupard of Women's Health Action is concerned about harmful representations of very thin women.
She is unconvinced that the fashion industry really wants to make any change to this but feels the laws in France are a good first move.
She says young people soak up what they see in the media and this can affect the way they view their own bodies.
"On the whole, fashion idealises skinniness," she says. "Young people should be able to see themselves reflected in the media, rather than some unattainable and unhealthy ideal."
She says critical media literacy is an important way to help mitigate the power of idealised and unrealistic norms.
"We run courses on critical media literacy in a number of Auckland high schools. It helps young people to understand the images don't represent normality," she says.
Kellet agrees that images of ultra-thinness warp the way people perceive what is "normal".
"Although these representations do not cause eating disorders, they can most certainly be inflammatory and can definitely be a contributing factor to disordered eating and other unhealthy behaviour," she says.
While New Zealand may not follow in the footsteps of France when it comes to legislation around model weight, it seems we still may have a way to go when it comes to the way in which we engage with images of idealised skinniness.
Back in Parnell, Lamb says a good starting point is for people to stop viewing the model physique as something they need to attain, but rather see it as a requirement for one particular type of job.
"Models are born with the physique that they have," she says.
"People should understand this and try to be happy with the body they have, not try to achieve a body that is impossible for them to attain."
Join the conversation on the Herald Life Facebook page
