“It tastes better to be skinny.” My skeletal, overtly gay boss replies to my request for a lunch break at the ridiculous hour of five. I’d been working all day at my PR job and being only 15 at the time, was used to the normal three meals a day. This along with hearing the nickname “Fat Ashley” for my slightly larger co-worker and I thought I would never feel ok eating a slice of pizza again. I had prepared myself for the brutality of the fashion world and the challenge of living in New York City for the summer, but nothing could have prepared me for the cruel honesty I was witnessing.

“Skinny gets you farther.” My boss adds. He was right too. All the pretty, thin interns got invited to the parties and events while girls like Ashley were left behind to answer the phones back at the office. When we had casting calls for models, the thinner the girls were, the quicker we hired them.
“I used to be a model,” a gorgeous tall blonde woman I worked under once told me. “But then I laid off the coke and started eating… now I’m huge,” she says while looking down at her size three waist.
The world of fashion is overflowing with bony bodies and airbrushed faces. From ads for clothing and perfume, to the runways at Fashion Week, all you see is thin, beautiful people. But these are not every-day people. They are models and it is their sole job to stay under 100 pounds and look perfect. However, when flipping through the pages of Elle, Vogue and Bazaar, women tend to forget that. We set down the magazine on the coffee table, look in the mirror and think, “God, I wished I looked like that.”

It is not just a select group of girls who have these insecurities about their bodies. When we walk through the hallway wondering if our hips look too wide, or look into the bathroom mirror wishing we could have Anja Rubrik’s bone structure, most of the other girls near us are doing the same thing too.

Junior Aubrey Dribben feels the pressure that these magazines put on girls.

“When I first think about the kind of body I’d like to have my mind immediately jumps to the model bodies I see in magazines,” Dribben said. “Then I break it down and know that it’s unrealistic.”

It may be unrealistic to want to look like Karlie Kloss, but it’s hard to just convince yourself that you won’t ever look like that when all you see in the magazines are twig-like bodies and beautiful faces.
Even though she has a clear mind on body image and prefers the pages of books to the pages of fashion magazines, Junior Hannah Callahan still struggles with self-image when pictures of rail-thin models are everywhere.
“The unrealistic goal of a model body is ingrained in the back of my mind,” Callahan said. “If want to loose weight, that will be the body I’m working for.”
Senior Gabby Mottaz models for major department stores and walks St. Louis Fashion Week. She feels that models paint an unreal picture of what girls are supposed to look like.
“The industry should be more careful about hiring unhealthy models, and they have started to crack down,” Mottaz said. ”They have height and weight requirements that must be met in order for models to work.”
The requirements Mottaz is referring to were created after a recent death due to a model being too thin. In 2006 a Brazilian model named Ana Carolina Reston died of a generalized infection, due to her weight, which was a frightening 88 pounds. This tragic story is one of many and only shows how far women will go to live up to an image.
CHS English teacher Jill Burleson has always been aware of the many problems our society has with the image of young girls. She organized the Empowering Young Women’s Conference and is greatly educated on the warped portrayal of women in our culture. She thinks the main problem with fashion magazines is that they over emphasize on appearance, when it is what’s inside that really matters.
“It’s sexist behavior,” Burleson said. “Men are not objectified like women are being.”
Where did this intense desire to be skinny come from? Women everywhere didn’t wake up one day and decide that beautiful means being thinner than a flag pole.

“All the way back to the 18th century, you have women getting ribs removed so they can have an 18 inch waist,” Burleson said. “When I was growing up Twiggy came along who was extremely thin, and that became the image.”
Twiggy was one of the first super models. Her doll-like eyes, long lashes and extremely thin build were so different from the buxom models of the 50’s. The interesting thing is, Twiggy was so thin because her father was a carpenter and her family didn’t have much money for food. Looking like you can’t afford three meals a day become “in” because of this new kind of model.
It wasn’t always thin or nothing. Throughout history there have been moments where being curvy or healthy was beautiful. But in this day, emaciated models are walking runways and appearing in magazine spreads.
The fashion industry is taking notice of this skewed view of women that they portray. There is a legal battle in the UK over making airbrushing illegal and many publications are adding plus size models to their magazines. Lara Stone, a model that has recently become extremely popular in the industry is a larger size four and is landing many covers and shoots. But can the larger models compete with the Kate Moss’ and Coco Rocha’s of the business?
Women want to see that you can be beautiful at every shape and size. Larger models could grace the pages of Vogue more, but magazine editors disagree.
This past summer, while working again at a Manhattan magazine, I was able to come to terms with the difference between models and myself. As a wide-eyed Russian model asked me for a belt to hold up the size zero jeans that were drowning her thin frame, I glanced at my body in the mirror. My body conscious skirt hugged my womanly hips and the lanky model towered over my small 5‘1 body. My job was to get her dressed and make sure all the clothes returned to their showrooms. Her job was to look thin and beautiful. This is just how things were and I was really ok with that.