Anti-anorexia campaign

[firecat]

The fatosphere is talking about an anti-anorexia campaign started by an Italian clothing company. Here is one discussion about it:

http://kateharding.net/2007/09/25/cheers-and-jeers-anorexia-n-models-edition/
The post contains a potentially distressing, NWS image.

I don't approve.

• The ad encourages judgement of a woman's body to produce its emotional effects. The culture's obsessiveness about judging body shape and its belief that body shape/size can tell you at a glance how healthy a person is—this is a big part of what encourages anorexia and fat-phobia in the first place.
• Plenty of people are going to look at it, say "Ew," and have no understanding that anorexia can also be a serious condition in people who are not skeletally thin. (In fact, if a person is fat, some of the same behaviors that anorexics engage in are often considered healthy and appropriate.)
• People will dismiss it by saying "Well, that's icky, but can't you just eat a sandwich now and then, and still stay thin? I mean, it's not like you can't control what goes in your mouth."
• Pro-ana sites are going to use it as inspiration.
• News articles about the ad come with the more or less explicit message of "See, anorexia is ugly. The women the fashion industry uses as models are beautiful. Therefore, they aren't really anorexic, and the fashion industry has nothing to do with anorexia." (Never mind that if the woman in the ad were wearing clothes and makeup, she would look like a thin fashion industry model.)

I like how sweetmachine put it in a comment on kate's post:

"I have a really really strong aversion to any campaign, anti-ED or no, that says we should look at this woman’s body and feel disgust or horror."

Comments

Re: Anti-anorexia campaign

[cassidyrose.livejournal.com]

also, yes, this person looks clearly sick -- but anorexics are sick long before they look like this (and they might never look like this). i think the association is all wrong.

Absolutely. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for bulimics to have myriad severe health problems, some resulting in death, when they are still "normal weight" or "overweight". Regardless of the diagnostic criteria, the sickness of eating disorders is in the beahviors and the damage they do to the body and the mind, not necessarily the size of the body.