If you’re slim you’ll be successful and win X Factor in one fell swoop – or marry a footballer

Following on from my being on Sky News discussing airbrushing and the power of media images

The danger of airbrushing. Start talking to your kids before the beauty industry does !

Here are my comments about eating disorders, bullying and fashion in http://www.publicsector.net/lifestyle/article.asp?CategoryId=32&ArticleId=11754

“Is fashion more ‘killer meals’ than ‘killer heels’, Joanna Lowy asks, following a coroner’s verdict that the fashion industry is to blame for eating disorders.

Killer heels; it’s a funny old term, isn’t it? As the proud owner of a pair or two, my interpretation comes down, rather simply, to the pain-inducing aspect of a pair of shoes which take up about a quarter of your body height. They may be beautiful, stylish, glamorous and bang on trend, but let’s face it, the longer we wear them, the shorter we feel our days on this earth to be. And thus, killer heels are killer, because they kill.

But that’s just my relationship with the fashion statement. Because killer heels are actually named as such due to their potential of killing others, not just physically but emotionally and mentally as well. ‘Did you see those shoes?’ ‘So jealous!’ ‘I’d die for a pair like that!’

You get my drift.

But whilst this is all cute, interesting at most, the fashion industry was last week associated with murder in a more serious way.

The claim: The fashion industry is directly responsible for the death of teenager Fiona Geraghty, who killed herself following taunts about being fat.

The damning verdict concluded that the 14-year-old girl, who had developed an eating disorder, had succumbed to the pressures of the fashion industry via her classmates’ bullying, and quoting a professor, claimed that the prevalence of eating disorders around young people did not exist before the 1970s.

Although both anorexia nervosa and bulimia escalated during the 70s and 80s, most sources agree that despite its rarity until the second half of the 20^th century, anorexia nervosa still existed beforehand. Many claim that the first descriptions of the disease in the western world date from the 12^th and 13^th centuries, and continued throughout the 17^th to the 19^th centuries, and that bulimia was first described among some of the wealthy during the Middle Ages, who would make themselves sick during meals so that they could eat more.”

Read the full article here