Beyond Skinny

This may be old news to some, but I recently became aware of the scandal around clothing company Ralph Lauren's retouching of their fashion models to make them appear skinnier. Skinnier than the already skinny models, maybe even skinnier than it's possible to be without being severely undernourished. Click here for a good comparison of the real model, and the retouched photo is below:



Ralph Lauren eventually apologized for the retouched photos after they got some media attention and there was a significant backlash. The model in the photo above, Filippa Hamilton, was actually fired by Ralph Lauren because she was too heavy at 5'10" and 120 pounds.

These retouched photos are extreme and bizarre examples of the constant stream of images of very thin women that appear in advertising and media. There's a mountain of statistics showing the high level of insecurity that women, and especially young women and girls have about their bodies: in one study 59% of girls expressed dissatisfaction with their body; one in four college-aged women has some form of disordered eating; women had 91% of the 11.7 million cosmetic surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed in 2007. Particularly through the media, women are under attack by capitalism. It's one more way that capitalism attempts to divide workers from one another.