To think that this model looks awful and quite unwell?

[CiderBomb]

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2507013/Victorias-Secret-Fashion-Show-afterparty-Sean-Avery-toasts-fiancee-Hilary-Rhodas-success.html

Got to say that it surprised me, Victoria Secrets models usually carry a bit more weight compared to the the emaciated girls we see doing the high fashion stuff.

She's so, so painfully thin. Her face is drawn and she looks older than her years.

When is the modelling world going to start using healthy looking girls who don't look like famine victims? This is not what people want to look at!

I was always very thin. Still am. But I'm smart enough to know that the modelling industry encourages all sorts of dangerous habits. Like, I don't know…eating water soaked cotton balls to quell the hunger pangs. Yes, really.

Some of these models might naturally be the shape they are, and eat a healthy diet. But I bet most aren't. The pre-runway show diet of the VC models has been well documented, and it ain't pretty.

I fucking hate the industry.

Agree with that lottieandmia

I thought it was widely known that models starving themselves and being pressured to do so happened a lot in the modelling industry?

I find some of the replies here bizarre TBH.

I get that people shouldn't be critical of this model personally, but as you say there is a bigger issue here. I'm surprised at the denial here too.

Yes some women are naturally very slim, but if you look at any group of women in real life, you will find a mixture of body types. The modelling industry does not represent reality in that sense.

How can anyone deny that that unreal representation of what women look like is damaging for women on the whole?

How many ex models go on to speak about their experiences in the industry which include having to starve themselves to get work?

That industry is not healthy, not for the individual or for women on the whole who have that image pushed upon them as 'normal'

Starving yourself is not 'normal' or conducive to pyhsical or mental wellbeing.

I think if this thread has shown anything (other than the snarky ad hominems that AIBU tends towards) it's that everyone's perceptions of what is "thin", and what is not, are very different. Which I find really interesting.

Still a bit at posters thinking Hilary Rhoda's BMI was around 25 though...

She looks amazing, and, more importantly, she looks healthy. She has great muscle tone so she is obviously looking after herself. I would rather aspire to her than some yo yo dieter tbh.

I actually laughed out loud at that comment (about the bmi), although it is not funny - but it is just astonishing that anyone could be so ill-informed.

I have found a picture of a model on a website that shows images of people and gives their heights and weights.

I think she looks pretty similar to the model who is the subject of this thread.

She is 5'10" tall and 115lb (just over 8 stone). This gives her a bmi of 16.5. She just looks like a typical catwalk model.

here

But we'll have plenty of people on this thread saying she looks great and they would love to have a body like hers.

I find it very worrying when my 12 year old size 6 dd says she thinks her thighs are too fat.

The prospect of anorexia scares me more than drugs or alcohol.

tbh though AmberLeaf unless you are a naturally slim person (I'm not using the word thin deliberately here), if you live the typical Western lifestyle and eat even an averagely healthy diet, you are going to put on weight throughout life, unless you exercise or diet, or both.

I don't think condemning someone because they diet or exercise or both is that realistic actually. Far more people die of lifestyle diseases caused by being overweight, lack of exercise and smoking and drinking too much than they do of anorexia.

Dieting and exercising and watching your weight does not mean an association with anorexia. I would have thought that watching your weight, dieting when necessary and regular exercise were a good thing, non? Again, more and more I think this going up in size every few years is a British thing, but that might because I'm in Belgium right now, and virtually every woman I meet talks about being on a diet and their "line".

Models look as they do because that shape shows off clothes best. It is a netural shape for clothes. Although I'm not that shape myself, I can judge pretty well from a neutral comparator what clothes will suit me and which ones don't. I can't do that with a plus sized model, because the height means that it still isn't anywhere near my own body shape. I suspect a lot of people do carry more weight than they are comfortable with, and models are one group that drive this home, hence they attempt to justify it by criticising models.

And I think in the run up to the Victoria's Secret show, just as I might watch my diet so as to ensure a flat stomach if I had a big night coming up and wanted my dress to look good, the models do certain things that they would not always do. There are ways to make your muscles stand out more in photographs, and I'm really glad to see a high profile model with muscle tone, rather than muscle being treated as something not desirable in women because men might not like it.

Exactly Mintyy. I have a nearly 10 year old dd and she is tiny - on the 5th centile for height and weight for her age. And she is already making comments about how her thighs look. All this stuff seeps into a child's reality however much you try to do as a parent to stop it.

Mintyy that model you link is not too thin. Her stomach, which the photo centres on, looks just fine. But I suspect you are too used to seeing people who are carrying a bit more weight.

BMI by the way was a tool created to compare populations, not individuals, who vary too much for it to be of use. That's why the unusually tall and short in a population, when taken as individuals, don't provide very useful results. Its the same with athletes.

mintyy, that's what scares me too. It's a very insidious and damaging message, I think - some posters on here have demonstrated it themselves. You're not supermodel thin? You must be lazy, greedy, stupid, ignorant, of lower moral standards. You disagree that only supermodel thin women should be thought of as beautiful? You're jealous and bitchy as well as lazy, greedy, stupid...

LessMissAbs - she is 5'10" and 8 stone 3. I know the model doesn't look as skeletal as some we are used to seeing - and that is what is so shocking. Don't you honestly not think a bmi of 16.5 is something to worry about? If you are happy to say that a bmi of 16.5 is perfectly fine, will you agree that a bmi of 28 is fine too?

Why would anyone try to say she has a BMI of 25-26?!

It just makes you seem misinformed, and deluded.

I have a BMI of 21, and even at 5"9.5', I am stacking pounds over this woman.

I think she looks great, by the way. I think pretty much everyone looks great, if only they would believe it.

LessMissAbs - you make an awful lot of assumptions about what people think - who thinks it's normal to go up a size every few years? I certainly don't. Why would you assume that people are concerned about extreme thinness in the entertainment industry because they themselves are carrying too much extra weight? That is just nonsense. I am small and have not put on extra sizes after having 3 children even.

The point here that you seem unwilling to take on board is that the ideal now for people in the public eye is for them to take thinness to a whole new level. Most of them are not slim, they are thin. Most of them are thinner than ever before because it's what the industry demands.

Agree with your points re musculature lessmiss. On balance, I'd rather see Jessica Ennis-Hill type models than the heroin chic superwaif types.

I also think that nobody has an objective view of their own diet and lifestyle - it's impossible to do so.

I'm 5'9" & 9.5stone so quite a BMI. I think Hilary looks just about ok but I read a study about how we need fat on our thighs & its much better to have it there than around your middle. I think there was actually a link between that and cancer. So I'm quite happy with my thighs!

*low BMI

I would suggest that anyone who thinks Hilary is at her own personal ideal healthy weight takes a look at this.

Scroll down past all the pics of the other better looking Victoria's Angels, and to my eyes there is a marked difference when you see HR's picture. She looks very strained and gaunt IMO. She has a that manic, bulgy eyed look that I associate with the pre-death Karen Carpenter.

And no, I'm not jealous!

I believe there is a very high probability that she has an ED. There is a small chance that she is healthy and naturally underweight. I would love to be a bit thinner than I am but I personally do not think this look is attractive. Too masculine with what looks like breast implants. Each to their own though. What I think is important is that fashion and the media portray a variety of different sized women who are healthy weights.

I agree SaucyJack. Why are people trying to argue that a BMI of 16 is healthy and normal when the GP will certainly tell you otherwise?

She is certainly tall and lean naturally but come on people she is certainly pushing her " natural" assets to the extreme here.
She is also a model and chosen to display her body publicly for a handsome price, unlike many women on here, so she would expect the usual picking apart of her looks it goes with the territory!

Very, very few women are naturally that thin. They do exist but it is very rare. As are the naturally obese.

I am almost 6 foot and very slim and muscular. But you don't get that sort of muscle definition without a punishing diet and excersise routine. Some posts on here are v naive sorry.

The other models do look fresher and more naturally that shape. VS seems to have changed over the last few years and now uses top models from the catwalk, used to be slightly apart from that. Might have an effect on the original ones.

Yes she looks much better in that video iFad.

SaucyJack - wow, she looks so gaunt and thin next to the other models who actually look much healthier. Looking at old pics she used to look more like the others and looked much better for it.

Wonder what she had to do to get herself like that - so much denial about the modelling industry here. Of course they all look like that naturally.