This past week, Israel passed legislation forbidding models with a body mass index under 18.5 to participate in fashion shows and advertisements. The law intends to demote the media's unhealthy perception of beauty and to bring an end to glamorizing the extraordinarily thin. Israel's law is just one of the international measures taken in the past few years to eliminate an unachievable standard of attractiveness promoted in the media and elsewhere. The Dove campaign for "real beauty" and Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani's campaign against anorexia further illustrate the serious actions being taken against the fashion industry's choice of models.
You see the argument all over the news: Nobody is perfect, so we should not encourage magazines and clothing brands which portray a "perfect" woman. Instead, advertising companies and designers ought to employ those with "real bodies" so as not to offend anyone who cannot achieve perfection. I argue, however, that such advertising and the media play only a marginal role in the construction of beauty. In reality, most of the girls I have seen - including myself - are more often comparing themselves to other girls than to celebrities.
The University has an attractive student body. In fact, by the time I walk from my dorm to the Corner I can easily spot dozens of students who could enter the modeling industry without having to lose a pound. In contrast, I could not say the same thing about several celebrities. Some famed personas are considered to be very beautiful, yet are in no way the size or shape of a typical woman on the runway. The current proportions of an average runway model are 34-24-34, plus or minus one inch, with a minimum height of five feet eight inches. Physical attractiveness thus remains a highly variable attribute which has little to do with the modeling industry's decisions.
The truth is, even conventional beauty differs from woman to woman. The bodies we see in magazines, however airbrushed and photoshopped, are actually achievable for some and genetically impossible for others. Moreover, we cannot say that the media, especially the modeling industry, is solely responsible for setting these standards.
Certain ideals of physical appearance have existed even before the introduction of mass media, and people went through just as much trouble to attain them back then as they do today. Chinese women used to bind their feet to keep them smaller, while the Mayans would balance a bead between their eyes so as to keep them permanently crossed. Though the perception of beauty in certain mediums such as modeling has shifted from voluptuous to thin, white to tan and short to tall, it is important to note that it is often the people - not the designers - who are picking whatever is popular. Furthermore, beauty is almost entirely in the eye of the beholder, or at least, in the eyes of the society. And although every culture holds its own conception of beauty, there are cultures which are not as attached to the digital media as we are.
Yet in a world where some models are dying of starvation, the media is an easy target to blame. Perhaps Israel's law is for the best, but even so, it does not give individuals grounds to dismiss all media for reflecting an invariable and intangible image of what is visually appealing. The fact that modern beauty is so variable is an example of how beauty is ever-dynamic and has little to do with the media at all. What is more, it is wishful thinking to assume that in this day and age, "beauty doesn't matter."
Regardless of the campaigns launched against it, beauty still plays a prominent role in both informal and professional settings. One study has gone so far as to conclude that physical attractiveness can make a person seem more friendly and can contribute to individual success in the business world. And yet, this is not the media's fault, nor is it contingent on the fashion industry; it is based on societal precedence and, like all ideas, will change as society evolves. After all, the face that launched a thousand ships was never on a billboard.
Denise Taylor's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at d.taylor@cavalierdaily.com.
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