Critical Mass

It seems that high fashion models—those gazelle-like creatures that Tyra Banks keeps trying to bring back to relevancy—may now have to follow rules other than “Don’t leave your blow on the toilet seat” and “If you’re going to abuse your assistant by chucking a phone at her head, make sure you offer a generous settlement.”

A few weeks before the start of New York’s Fashion Week, a council of fashion designers have cobbled together a list of “guidelines” aimed at keeping their human clothes hangers from looking like, well, human clothes hangers. The geniuses who decided that it was high time to bring leggings and skinny jeans back to the masses have put forth mind-blowing suggestions such as placing nutritious snacks backstage and requiring models identified as having an eating disorder to receive professional help.

In a stunning act of hypocrisy, great avatars of fashion like Anna Wintour and Diane von Furstenberg actually came out in favor of a so-called crackdown, apparently realizing that the jutting clavicle beast they’ve created has spun out of control. When models become so distractingly thin that they pull the attention away from the couture, it’s a problem. When five Brazilian modes die in quick succession from anorexia, that’s just bad P.R.

The recommendations fall short of the more drastic measures taken in Milan and Madrid, where fashion show organizers banned models whose body mass index fell below World Health Organization standards. And in an even less promising sign, several elite clothing brands have announced the advent of a new size—the double zero.

Downsizing seems inevitable since “zero became the new two and two became the new four.” So says Stanley Tucci to Anne Hathaway in a scene from “The Devil Wears Prada”—a film that mirrors our own schizophrenia by simultaneously skewering and revering the fashion world. Although it’s played as satire, hearing Anne Hathaway’s slender but healthy body derided throughout the film strikes a nerve. It hits us where we live, knowing that no matter how thin we are, we’re never thin enough. (Six is the new fourteen, didn’t ya know?)

Granted, we live in an obese nation where the associated health risks rightfully receive a great deal of attention. America needs to put down the chicken wing and lose some weight. But the skinny obsession has a lot more to do with status than with health consciousness, and weight has become emblematic of the growing divide between the haves and have nots. Americans are fat and getting fatter every day. Kids are fat and getting fatter every day. But as the average mortal expands, the standard of beauty has shrunk to literally deadly proportions.

The recent backlash against models and actresses with negative body fat might be a sign that toothpick-chic has officially outlasted its welcome. Or it could be a signal that we’re squarely trapped in the Catch-22 being played out daily on tabloid covers, where slim frames are celebrated and celebrities who gain weight are splashed unflatteringly across the pages. However, celebs who lose too much weight—as Nicole Richie and the Olsen twins have learned the hard way—become the unhappy recipients of even more derision.

True, outright revolt is always an option. Like peasants storming the Bastille, we could hurl carb-loaded breadsticks at models strutting the New York runways and shout to the heavens, “I’m hungry as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” But it’s hard to fight against a cultural ideal that’s slowly ingrained and then re-enforced a thousand different times a day. Logic and reason seems like insufficient weapons against such a stealth campaign.

The only comfort is that every cultural pendulum eventually swings back. By the time it does we will have likely found a new and more ingenious way to wreck ourselves in the name of fashion. But someday, maybe sooner than we think, six might once again become the new six.