High Street skeletons
We all know about painfully thin catwalk stars. Here we reveal the deeply worrying vital statistics of models for High Street chains
With their gaunt frames, skeletal limbs and tiny waists, catwalk models are notorious for bearing no resemblance to ‘ordinary’ women. Over the years, designers from Victoria Beckham to Armani have come under fire for using emaciated models — and last month calls were made for a law banning stick-thin figures from the fashion world.
But startling news this week suggests that, amid all the concern over the catwalk, we may have missed a worrying trend much closer to home. For models used by fashion chains on the high Street have become just as alarmingly thin as their designer counterparts. Abercrombie & Fitch, the U.S. retailer which launched in the UK in 2007, has been singled out for using ‘unhealthily skinny’ models in its ads.
indeed, every model used on the brand’s website was found to have a waist-to-height ratio of less than 0.4, a marker experts deem the minimum safe level.
this ratio is worked out by dividing waist circumference by height, giving a person’s waist size as a fraction of their height — which indicates how wellproportioned their body is.
A ratio under 0.4 is so worrying that a leading nutritionist says stores showing off such unrealistic bodies are setting a dangerous example to young women.
‘A lot of young girls . . . see these models and think they need to have the same shape as them,’ said Dr Margaret Ashwell OBE, who has done extensive research on the waist-to-height ratio. ‘And that’s when they slip into eating disorders.’
the focus on high Street models comes just months after topshop, Oasis and New Look were forced to replace mannequins after customers criticised them for being ‘grotesquely thin’.
SOiS Abercrombie an isolated example — and have shops cleaned up their act? A Mail investigation has found this to be far from the case.
Of 11 high Street chains analysed, every one of the models in their recent campaigns had a waist-to-height ratio below the healthy level.
Among the worst are h&M, where German model Anna Ewers has a waist-to-height ratio of 0.34, and topshop, where the Kenyan face of the brand, Malaika Firth, has one of 0.33.
British model hollie-May Saker, who appears in River island’s Autumn-Winter campaign, and Next’s Suvi Koponen both have a disturbingly low ratio of 0.32.
the largest waist measurement we came across was 25in, though many were as small as 23in, a U.S. size ‘triple zero’.
According to the NhS a healthy waist size is 32in, while the average UK woman’s waist is between 32 and 35in.
Among those with 23in waists are Zara’s Olympia Campbell — younger sister of British catwalk star Edie — and Rasa Zukauskaite, the face of Oasis.
At least six high Street models have a body mass index (BMi, worked out by dividing a person’s weight by their height squared) of between 16 and 18.4 — indicating malnutrition. A healthy BMi lies between 18.5 and 24.9.
Considering the average British woman has a BMi of 26.9, these ultra-thin individuals can hardly be said to represent customers.
A look at high Street campaigns from the past few decades shows the change is not a recent one, but since the turn of the century models have become markedly smaller. Nineties faces Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Gisele Bundchen wore a size 10 and had waists of around 28in, which is 5in larger than triple zero.
Fashion expert Caryn Franklin, who campaigns for diversity in the industry, says today’s models are a symptom of changing ideals about body shape and size.
While in the Fifties large hips and curvy figures were in vogue, this was replaced by a waifish look in the Sixties and later flat stomachs and large breasts in the cosmetic surgery heyday of the Seventies and Eighties.
By the Nineties models were straight-up-and- down — and today takes that trend to its extreme. ‘Models have grown taller in the 34 years i have been working,’ Caryn explains.
‘Now it is not unusual to see a 5ft 11in model [5ft 9in used to be standard]. But the measurements designers request for hips — 33 to 34in — remain the same.
‘Only very young models whose bodies have not matured can make this measurement. As they get to their late teens, it becomes harder to stay this thin, so the gruelling diets begin.’
the statistics bear this out. Kate Moss, whose career peaked in the Nineties and early Noughties, is just 5ft 8in, while Sixties icon twiggy stands at 5ft 6in. At their peak they had waist-toheight ratios of 0.4 or very close.
Caryn adds that the unrealistically- shaped models of today may also be a response to the trend for outlandish clothes on the high Street, with chains mimicking designers more than ever before.
‘Showcasing a garment on an anatomically incorrect body hides design flaws and strange, unflattering trends look appealing,’ she says.
Dr Ashwell says a low waist-toheight ratio can signal fertility problems and put models at risk of an early death. ‘Fat at the waist is wrapped around key organs such as our hearts and livers. Women need to have a minimum amount of fat in this area for the reproductive system to function properly.’
Last year, she published a paper with colleagues at City University London’s Cass Business School showing that a ratio below 0.4 is also indicative of higher mortality rates.
‘the female body should naturally be a pear shape,’ Dr Ashwell adds. ‘Seeing skinny, shrivelled models makes girls think they should look like that instead.’
So what do the high Street shops — and indeed the models — have to say for themselves?
Of all the stores contacted by the Mail, just two responded. Abercrombie said it was ‘reviewing images in our marketing and will take appropriate action as we move through that process.’
ASpOKESpERSON for topshop said it was ‘committed to supporting a healthy body image’ and insisted all models are ‘cast from leading international agencies that adhere to stringent guidelines regarding model health’.
As for the models themselves, a number have recently spoken out about the pressure within the industry to lose weight.
Earlier this month, 23-year-old British model Charli howard — who has appeared in harper’s Bazaar — wrote an open resignation letter to her agency for telling her she was ‘too big’ to work, despite being a size six to eight.
‘i refuse to feel ashamed and upset on a daily basis for not meeting your ridiculous, unob-
tainable beauty standards,’ she wrote in an online post. ‘The more you force us to lose weight, the more designers have to make clothes fit our sizes, and the more young girls are being made ill.’
British model Rebecca Pearson, 30, who writes the blog Model Type Face, told the Mail she once dieted so much that her waist shrunk to 22.5in.
‘I went through a period of really controlled eating, some days eating nothing, in a bid to lose weight,’ she says. ‘I’d hate myself for eating an apple.’ Another model, who has a waist- to- height ratio of 0.35, spoke anonymously: ‘My agency told me to lose three centimetres from my waist,’ she reveals.
‘I had to travel into the office at least once a week to be measured in front of eight people. It led to me not eating for two or three days at a time.
‘It took four months of crash dieting and going to the gym every day to lose the weight they initially wanted — and then they told me to lose another two centimetres.’
Models 1, the agency representing Hollie- May Saker, the River Island campaign star with a 23in waist, told the Mail its requirements for models adhere to ‘basic wellbeing measures’.
Hannah Pumfrey, director of London-based Flair Talent, which has provided models for Abercrombie in the past, insists she would never take on an ‘uber-skinny model’.
She says the reason today’s models appear far smaller is because ‘we’re getting fatter. The size of the models hasn’t changed.’
A glance in the windows of most High Street shops would suggest otherwise.