Finally Talking About It - Modeling and Body Image: The Size Zero Elephant in The Room
Modeling and Body Image: The Size Zero Elephant in The Room
I would surprise absolutely no-one by stating that most of us are, at least to some extent, walking, talking contradictions. We demand more government funding for federal programs that aid the people, all the while dreaming of paying less in taxes. We blame fast food companies for our expanding waistlines, but feel furious and invaded when restrictions are proposed concerning sale of sodas the size of a small child. We drive on parkways, park on driveways, and spend Thanksgiving Day planning our strategy for Black Friday shopping. We make “getting drinks” plans that we hope will be cancelled and we ask our friends “Does my butt look fat in these jeans?” despite being fully aware that any answer besides “Hell No!” is absolutely unacceptable. Science may deem us to be homo sapiens, but a good look at society makes homo hypocrite seem a bit more accurate.
Being the Homo sapiens that we are (I’ll be genuinely impressed if I’m excluding anyone here), we talk about women. A lot. We write songs about them, deny them adequate maternity leave, and write them Mother’s Day cards. We devote shrines to the Virgin Mary and make feminist bumper stickers instructing them to “Be their own Goddess.” Our interest in women’s bodies leads us to take their photos to fill Playboy Magazines while insistently telling our daughters “You should really cover up more.” In fact, few areas that so vividly demonstrate the human capacity for duplicity than our discussions of women’s body shapes and attractiveness. The jarring disconnect between our biology and our culture becomes particularly undeniable when we show our opinions regarding what women ought to look like.
Spend a few hours inside any club or sitting at any bar in New York, and I can almost guarantee that you’ll witness several failed endeavours to “get some” using the pathetically cliche, and yet unbelievably popular pickup line: “Hey, you should be a model!” I almost wish I could end this entire analysis here, with the single conclusion of “That line never worked for anyone, ever.” Boom. Let me drop the hairbrush I’ve been using as a microphone.
And yet, the firm belief shared by lonely souls everywhere that there is nothing that a woman desires more than to have her body likened to that of a runway model is fascinating to me. Professional fashion models are thought to exemplify bodily perfection and have become symbols of ideal beauty for the general public. Naturally, the notion that “sexy sells” is in no way a recent realization: attractive men and women have been coaxing our wallets open for decades, using captivating charisma and killer smiles to sell us everything from chocolate to toothpaste to cars to timeshares. We can be real here - I’ll be first to admit that pretty people have convinced me to consider, even if just for a moment, buying everything from seven-dollar coconut water to sexy hybrid sedans to dinners at high-end steakhouses - and this is coming from someone who doesn’t eat meat and doesn’t know how to drive. However, one doesn’t have to look closely to see that the busty blonde trying to convince you that beer is sexy is quite different from the waifish brunette strutting in the latest Givenchy gown. Odds are, our beer-babe is anonymous and underpaid, whereas the runway model’s face has graced a magazine cover or two. Liken your girlfriend to the former, and she may even be offended; yet, somehow, your drawing any similarity to the scowling, skinny model apparently makes any woman “feel special.” So, I guess the golden rule we’re learning here is that, to the Modern Woman, donning a cold stare, an adolescent physique, and (often) a critically low BMI and is somehow preferred to being an image of sexuality and radiating personality and charm. Call women out for wearing Ugg boots with shorts all you want, but this standard seems even less logical to me.
We’ve created a system in which a billion-dollar business seems to directly contradict our bodies’ wiring. So, where did we go wrong?
The endlessly ongoing discussion of women’s body shapes and attractiveness barren distinction has attempted to explain the gap between biology and culture for quite some time. Several concepts of female beauty have emerged from this analysis, and have entered the realms of fashion design and popular culture. Current obsessions over “thigh gaps,” “bikini bridges,” and the “A4 waist,” may remain, in the minds of some, ridiculous crazes fueled by individuals with too much time and too many social media followers, but images such as the “hourglass figure” have undeniably shaped the way we view and talk about women, sparking everything from the corset industry to a surprising amount of rap lyrics.
The biological study of body shape has, for two decades, been preoccupied with the ratio of waist to hip circumference.This isn’t surprising, considering that the low ratio of waist to hip size in females is, among primates, a feature unique to humans. Several adaptive mechanisms might have contributed to its evolution and to its ability to draw our attention. First, because a human newborn has a relatively large head, a large pelvis facilitates its delivery, making labor easier and decreasing the risk of complications and fatalities. Secondly, a narrow waist is a visual cue of the absence of pregnancy and therefore current fecundity—a feature that ancestral men sought in women. This may be an especially important cue in humans because, unlike the clear signals given off by most female animals in heat, women do not signal their present fertility in any other easily perceptible way. Third, fat - when deposited around the hips rather than the waist - enables bipedal stability of pregnant and lactating women, and contains fatty acids beneficial for the brain development of the fetus and infant. In fact, there is even evidence that the fat-deposit patterns of pregnancy, which tend to preserve the “hourglass” ratio for as long as possible, are linked to ensuring that pregnant women remain physically attractive to their mates, discouraging male abandonment.
An iconic study done in the late 1980s by Dr.Devendra Singh used clever experimental manipulations of line drawings and a high precision assessment procedure famously demonstrated that images of women with waists 70% as big as their hips tend to be most attractive. Further research revealed that a waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) of approximately 0.7:1, also reflects a distribution of abdominal fat associated with good health and fertility. Singh’s experiments were repeated in a variety of countries and societies that differ in both average body shape and apparent ideals. The results weren’t unanimous, but a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 came up as most attractive more often than not. A pair of experiments performed in Newcastle University and UCLA, each of which essentially allowed heterosexual males to formulate an “ideal” female body using a combination of photographs and digital images produced concluded that the ideal female body according to the men (the one shown on the left in each pair, above) had a BMI of 18.82, a waist-to-hip ratio ratio of .70, or a BMI of 18.8, and a waist-to-hip ratio of .69 respectively. The idea of an optimal ratio is so appealing in its simplicity that it became a staple factoid for magazines such as Cosmo. Singh also showed that Miss America pageant winners and Playboy playmates, two samples of women thought to embody American beauty ideals, tended to have a WHR of 0.7, despite trends of increasing general slenderness in both groups in recent decades.
Above is the "ideal" body of a woman (left). On the right, the average body of a young woman, based on BMI.
Now is just about the right time to bring up the fact that the 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio is far from the norm among American women. A recent large-sample survey found the average Waist-to-Hip ratio among White and Asian American Women over age 24 to be roughly 0.8. Among African American and Latino women, the norm deviated even further from the industry definition of “perfect” - both groups averaged around 0.83. Meanwhile, the CDC can inform us that, as of 2017, the average BMI among White, Black, and Hispanic American women was 26.6, 31.8, and 28.9 respectively. Unsurprisingly, as we step up from the public viewing area of the fashion scene onto the runway itself, average measurements snap instantly into alignment with our one aspect of our established standard of perfection - WHR. Two separate surveys of supermodels performed in Korea and Britain placed supermodels’ average WHR at 0.69 and 0.701. So, is our grand conclusion that supermodels are evolutionarily perfect? Don’t run away yet, and let me tell you that these same studies placed the average BMIs of these supermodels at 17.2 and 17.3. A few hours of some very dedicated, espresso-fueled searching through studies of models and their body types showed me that, even in the most recent, nuanced, body-positive runway shows, the highest average model BMI stiletto-clicks in at 17.6 - medically underweight and a perfectly-straightened hair’s width away from the American Psychiatric Association’s cutoff for diagnosing anorexia nervosa.
Holly Moore walked the runway for Alex Perry
So, looking at runway models, let’s ask ourselves, (referring both to the racoon-esque eye makeup and the inconsistent adherence to “ perfect” body standards): “What’s going on here?”
To answer that, we’ll need to talk about fat deposits. Sexy, right? Bare with me - I promise we’ll get back to Playboy playmates in a minute. As we discussed earlier, the fat distribution in humans depends both on their age and their sex. The sexes are similar in infancy, early childhood, and old age. Critically, differences in fat distribution are greatest from early teenage until late middle age. This is because fat distribution in humans is regulated by steroid hormones, and fat can be used from one region of the body at the same time as it is being accumulated at another. Extensive studies have demonstrated that sex hormones affect specific regional adiposity and regulate utilization and accumulation of fat. The most striking gender-specific difference in the physiology of fat accumulation and utilization are observed in the abdominal and gluteofemoral (buttocks and thighs) regions. In simplest terms, testosterone stimulates fat deposits in the abdominal region and inhibits fat deposits in the gluteofemoral region. The estrogen, in contrast, inhibit fat deposits in the abdominal region and maximally stimulate fat deposits in the gluteofemoral region more than in any other region of the body. In addition, female sex hormones also stimulate fat deposits in the breasts. Thus, a woman with average levels of sex hormones is naturally predisposed to develop an “hourglass” figure, or in the romantic, poetic description of Sir Mix a Lot: “An itty bitty waist and a round thing in your face.”
Granted, because today’s women, (and men) are not guaranteed be at what nature might call their “optimal physique” - naturally, as body weights rise and waistlines widen, most of us may come to be a little fluffier around the edges than we could be. Letting ourselves rise above clickbait-level and swiftly detouring from either a nutrition lecture or a ridiculing of some sort of cabbage-soup-diet-craze, we’ll move right ahead and arrive at the fact that a woman of average height (which, in the United States, happens to be around 5’4’’) who has normal sex-hormone levels will find herself with a waist-hip ratio almost identical to that found on statues of Ancient Greek goddesses and within the pages of Playboy magazine. Estrogen, though it may not look it by its molecular structure, is sexy. As an almost suspiciously nice gift of nature, statistically speaking, the average woman will actually attain a (cold-heartedly-objective, yet admittedly proven-to-be-preferable) 0.7 WHR at a healthy BMI and body-fat percentage. If anything, because of the aforementioned sex-specific mass-distribution tendencies, women will tend to become curvier (read: more attractive Darwin-style) with moderate weight gain. It’s a pretty sweet deal - chances are, you can go have that cookie, too.
So, what makes supermodels any different? And why does the standard figure strutting down the runway draw up images of “that diet where I don’t eat anything, and then when I’m about to pass out, I take a nice, nourishing sip of extra-fat-free water?” Let’s draw our eyes from the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show runway and back to the (equally sexy, I swear) concepts of hormones, BMI, and fat-distribution tendencies. I know. Picture the scientists in their sexiest underwear if that’s of any consolation, but there’s a surprisingly simple explanation here. First, let’s establish that runway models are among the top candidates for people who hear “Just how tall ARE you?” far, far too often. Because they are. Tall, that is. The average model’s height in recent shows hovers around 5’11’’ - more than half a foot above the 5’4’’ average among American women, and taller even than the 5’9.5’’ height that is the average for men. Besides potentially leading one to wonder why on earth high fashion designers still bother with sky-high heels, this fact firmly establishes that the bodies of runway models are, in general, significantly different from those of the average woman you’ll see shopping, walking in the park, or sitting at the bar. Why is this height difference so significant? Perhaps most crucially, it’s important to consider that Body Mass Index (BMI) is a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. Using this calculation results in a metric that is surprisingly practical and straightforward when applied to average-height humans, but which can lead to some unexpected, and misleading conclusions at the upper and lower ends of the height spectrum: shorter-than-average individuals in perfect health may find that they qualify as “overweight,” and slim individuals of above-average height may be “underweight” without realizing it. Combining this with the fact that, due to biological factors, tall individuals have statistically lower than average body fat percentages than individuals of average height due to various biological factors, it’s simply true that the average BMI on the podium will be low, and can fluctuate drastically with the gain or loss of a mere pound or two.
All 6 women weigh exactly 70kg, or 150lb - the national average in Australia
It’s also worth noting that tall individuals possess above-average bone density and muscle-mass ratios, due to the body’s need to properly support an elongated skeleton. Taking the weight of this extra bone and muscle into account on an already low BMI leaves little weight to come from the substance that we, evolutionarily, find attractive in women’s bodies - strategically placed fat. Any individual of above-average height will have less-than-average fat on his or her body, and an additional correlation between above-average height and below-average levels of female sex hormones mean that the little amount of fat on a tall woman’s body may not even trend toward her breast and hip areas. Returning to pop music terms - when you’re tall and skinny, it’s hard to have “All the right junk in all the right places.” Because weight distributes differently, simply gaining weight often doesn’t enhance “curviness” whatsoever, potentially leaving runway models in pursuit of an “hourglass” silhouette to resort to simply losing more weight to shrink their waists. This, naturally, will similarly affect waist-hip ratio, but can also lead to the persistent presence of dangerously underweight models that is the well known darker side of the high fashion industry. For the majority of average-size females, an objectively sexually attractive, curvy figure will emerge naturally when puberty, with all its pimples, mood swings, and magical hormones, comes to town. Women taller than most men, with a biological inclination to lower weights and struggles in the Cup-Size Department, encounter the rare situation in which curves aren’t so much “built” in the boobs and booty as they are “whittled down” in the waist.
Taller individuals will have a tendency to have comparatively longer limbs and less curvy bodies
So, now we find ourselves staring down the barrel of a contradiction almost as blatant as my declaring that I’m quitting caffeine while sipping an espresso.
We as a species, are inclined to find outward signs of fertility attractive - to see healthy, feminine curves and do a double-take. So, why do all men fantasize about the thin, leggy runway models with adolescent physiques and cheekbones you could cut your hand on? The simple answer is: they don’t. And, they’re not meant to. Really. That thigh gap don’t bring all the boys to the yard. Thing is ...it was never supposed to.
You see, the runway model was never intended to be a strutting image of femininity, fertility, and sex appeal - the Venus of Willendorf would not be modeling for Gucci. A more accurate job description, frankly, is a walking wire hanger. Sure, it doesn’t have quite the same allure to it but, in crudest terms, the best runway model is one who is the ultimate vehicle to transport avant-garde garments that cost more than college tuition up and down a 30 metre runway - a Rolls Royce for clothes, of sorts. It is for this reason that the sought-after runway model physique stresses length of legs and torso: long limbs and a slender frame exaggerates the flowing folds or the extremely defined lines of the clothing draped over the body.
Longer lines, in the form of thin, long limbs showcase a much greater extreme of motion during a walk, and a visible, exposed bone structure allows the fabric to glide, unobstructed, along the body. Extreme proportions allow those… interesting outfits that grace Fashion Week runways to come to life, take center stage, and make maximum impact. For further proof, it’s enough to take a look at the way fashion designers draw the sketch the fashion illustrations from which any runway-bound outfit is made.
While the clothing in such images may be undoubtably sexy from an artistic point of view, the woman in the drawing is just an allusion to a wire hanger, existing only to showcase the garments. In some cases, the female in the sketch can be reduced to only an oval head and a torso fashioned from a pair of triangles. This is not about sexy women but about exaggerated lines. If anything, it’s sexy geometry.
This is in no way saying that runway models are not intended to be found beautiful, they very much are. The women flaunting the beautiful pieces that are the creative life-work of world-famous designers are intended to be as stunning, eye-catching, and mesmerizing as the artistic clothes themselves. But, the eyes they’re supposed to catch, traditionally, simply don’t belong to typical heterosexual men. Let’s be real here, how many straight, man-off-the-street guys attend runway events and are deeply interested in the intricacies of couture fashion? It may be 2018, but I’d venture to say the point still stands. These women are deliberately intended to hold the gazes of the audiences that watch Paris Fashion Week, starry-eyed, every year - to make the art of clothing look attractive to other fashionista females and, if anything and, statistically speaking, a number of gay men.
Typical heterosexual men are much more likely to be drawn to a female silhouette that actually exemplifies the female secondary sexual traits, such as high hip to waist ratios, breasts that balance the figure, and a healthy amount of body fat. Of course, the average chap isn’t thinking of evolutionarily preferred traits and hearing “It’s a girl!” in a maternity ward, but deep in our primitive reptile brains, it’s signs of youth, genetic health and fertility that get us hot and flustered. If scientists wrote our rap songs, there’d be a lot more about wanting to do our part to increase the population and continue the species in the lyrics of our Top 40 tracks. The ultra-thin fashion models whose photos adorn these magazines and who flaunt the latest Parisian designs on runways are quite different from the women who are attractive enough to men that they are willing to pay to look at them, like Playboy Playmates.
I promised we’d get back to this, so let’s get down and dirty and analytical, shall we? The average Playmate is 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 115 pounds, giving her a BMI of 18.6. Most Playboy Playmates have a BMI around 19 - higher than the 17.1 that is an (optimistic) industry standard in the world of runway fashion, but similar to the “optimal” BMI established in the studies mentioned earlier. Objectively, they’re certainly thin, but if one were to compare them with young women in much of present-day Eurasia, and with American women before the obesity epidemic of the turn of the 21st Century, one would find that Playmates are not really much skinnier than average - the median BMI in 1960 was a bit over 20. Before 1980, almost two-thirds of American women in their late teens had a BMI below 20. So Playmates, the quintessential American sex icons, are neither unusually thin, nor have they been getting skinnier over the years.
From a physical standpoint, the main factor that, perhaps, makes Playmates unique is that they exhibit the curviness typical of older, fully mature women with the appealing, youthful slimness of females at their biological fertile peak that occurs in the late teens. The typical Playmate's bust, waist, and hip measurements are 35-23-34. Using the difference between bust and waist, and waist and hips in relation to height, a typical Playmate is 54% more curvaceous than an average 18-year-old high school graduate, while maintaining a BMI slimmer than an average, fully-developed woman in her late twenties or early thirties.
Fashion models are quite different from Playboy models. Their average BMI is only 17.1 and almost half have BMI's below 17 (compared with just 6% of Playmates). They have much smaller bust sizes (by 3 inches), larger waists, and similar sized hips. They are also extraordinarily tall, averaging 5 feet 10, taller than 99 percent of American women. A typical Playmate's hips are 53% of her height, similar to other women with the same BMI. But the hips of a top fashion model are only 46% of her height, making her look 20% thinner, adolescent-like, and almost boyish. (Shockingly, the ratio in a typical teenage boy is actually higher: 49%) Runway models are also much less curvy than Playmates: a typical Playmate is 36% more curvy than a typical fashion model, and it may be a good thing that this is so! Were we to attempt to, without altering weight-to-height ratio, place Playmate-level curves on a body with the height of a typical runway model, we’d find ourselves in the same situation famously faced by a human-sized Barbie - gracefully falling flat on our faces, anatomically unable to stand upright. And, since their curvaceousness is what makes Playmates so attractive to men, for most heterosexual males, the proportions of runway fashion models don’t set off the procreation-preference alarm that we call “I’d tap that.”
Unfortunately, many women and girls seem to believe that men find the extreme slenderness culturally associated fashion models especially attractive. In study after study, women consistently underestimate the amount of body fat that men claim to prefer. When asked to predict the figure that men will find most attractive, women consistently choose a skinnier figure than the men actually prefer. Perhaps because they look at their own bodies through lenses tainted by beauty standards that prevail in the female-centric world of fashion, the figures women think men prefer are more like fashion models than Playmates. (For what it's worth, men also misjudge women's preferences for male muscle and genital size.) The figure that the men have been proven to prefer actually strays little from the silhouette most healthy female bodies will naturally align with after puberty. This misreading of men's desires, which no doubt is fueled by a mass-media in which every day brings “13 New Bodily Flaws You Didn’t Even Know You Had” may encourage some women to mistakenly think they would be more attractive to men if they weighed less. So, as I take my stiletto-donning step down from the soapbox, I’ll simply hope to leave any girl out there with an idea.
Perhaps, instead of running on treadmills and lifting weights in pursuit of Thigh Gaps and bikini bridges, let’s run to The Strand and pick up a book - let’s bridge the gaps in our knowledge. Move that A-4 paper away from your waistline, shove it in a printer, and (after the goddamn printer jams a few times, of course,) let it come to display the words of a story only you, and not your waist-hip ratio or BMI, can tell. You’d rather date the guy that asks for your number, not your measurements. The right people will care not about the composition of your body, but instead about what’s inside your head.
(Full list of works cited available - email)
