Manorexic CHIC
For years, LIZ JONES has fought against fashion’s dangerous obsession with waif-like female models. Now, horrified by the stick-men she’s seen on this year’s male catwalks, she rages against the rise of...
THE critics seem to be in raptures. ‘The show of the season!’ trumpets Vogue. com. ‘A banger. Monumental.’ The catwalk show the (male) fashion critic is raving about is the Rick Owens collection for spring/summer 2018, recently sent down the Paris runway.
The star of the ‘show of the season’ is the model in the centre of this spread. The one with the shaved head, a face so gaunt his ears appear huge, cheekbones so sharp they could grate Parmesan. His ribs are jutting from a body devoid of an ounce of fat. He is indeed a dot, so small as to be almost invisible. So gaunt is his figure that he looks more like the survivor of a concentration camp.
And while it’s an industry that is seen as frivolous, it’s not.
It’s toxic, and it seeps into every corner.
This fashion ‘moment’ reminds me of the day I hugged supermodel Gisele backstage at Dior, and discovered she felt as fragile as a sparrow. That started a 20-year fight to persuade the fashion industry to only use girls who are healthy, a fight that ultimately failed, as little has changed. I understand why it wants girls to remain in pre-adolescent stasis: it’s cheap and easy to make clothes for a stick insect, while the gay mafia that controls fashion finds breasts and hips revolting. But why on earth are they now doing the very same thing to young men? The knock-on effects are all too predictable. According to eating disorder charity Beat, a quarter of sufferers are now male.
A BBC survey in May found the number of men being treated had increased over three years by 27%, while the number of women was up by 13%. Even those numbers might be conservative, as men find it harder to seek help. But one figure leaps out: boys as young as eight have been diagnosed with anorexia. Selfesteem has plummeted, with 43% of boys reporting dissatisfaction with their bodies.
Designers from Christopher Bailey at Burberry to Hedi Slimane (slim by name, slim by nature) have long used geeks with bad posture on the catwalk. No one took much notice. It was accepted that the girls were the celebrities.
But this new crop of male models is something else. It’s a complete and utter rejection of the more conventional David Gandy template – the M&S model is all fake tan, square jaw and rippling muscles – replacing him with a more modern version who is so busy online he never sees the sun, and who never exercises anything other than his thumb.
One male fashion editor told me it is ‘geek chic, and then some. Young men who are proud to be unhealthy, because they live virtually’. But the emaciation? ‘Designers like these new boys, as they have rejected the real world. They are almost virtual. Ghosts.’
That’s the way that many who see them will be led to behave. Young men who are not natural pipe cleaners will starve to become so; and of all psychiatric illnesses, anorexia is the hardest to recover from, with the most fatalities.
The charity All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, which has been promoting healthy diversity, is clear that this is a real concern. ‘Young male models might struggle to acknowledge their vulnerability and tough out unhealthy demands regarding keeping their body on-trend, shape wise,’ says co-founder and former Clothes Show presenter Caryn Franklin.
‘The fashion industry carries huge power to influence the way we think about our physical appearance and impacts our selfesteem.’
How then, does she explain what, to most observers, might seem an extraordinary departure?
The answer is depressingly simple: ‘It’s a bid to create a new look and form trends that are picked up by the high street, in order to sell more clothes.’ Ah. So, it’s cadavers driven by commerce.
The men on these pages might well be natural weeds but as psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos says: ‘The model in the main photograph is underweight. It’s shocking.’
While getting the Gandy look takes hard work, looking like these models is pretty achievable.
Papadopoulos blames social media: ‘Boys are more exposed to these images than they used to be. It’s all part of the “noise” in the media, a need to get noticed.’
Of course eating disorders have myriad causes, from genetic susceptibility to anxiety. But the fact the fashion industry is holding up young men whose appearance is so gaunt they make Pete Doherty look robust is asking for trouble. Boys will copy the images on these pages. Don’t believe me? A few weeks ago I got a letter from a mum who told me off for always focusing on girls. Her son is 12, and believes his thighs are fat.
I hope to God he’s not online, looking at these photos. Seeing how he too can be a fashionable dot on the landscape.