H & M model photographs

[Clafoutie]

I realise this isn’t a new thing. And I realise that H & M are not alone in this. But my eye was drawn by an H & M advert on this site and when I visited the H & M website I was appalled by the photos of models there. A lot of them are no doubt AI generated and modified, but they are presenting images of women who look unwell. I thought the fashion industry was moving on from representing women in this way. I was naive.

I'm not saying she isn't, I'm saying it's been badly edited. Her legs are not unhealthy, she's got good muscle there, but her arms don't match, they are significantly thinner than my DD17s and she's an anorexic with a BMI of about 15 at the moment. They don't match up.

As sad and upsetting as any mental health issues are, blaming healthy slim people for others having eating disorders is simply unfair. I know someone who had an eating disorder who blamed their issues on (naturally) slim classmates.

What? No of course not, nor did I even indicate such a thing, and anorexia is not caused by slim models. And factually at a macro level we do not have a societal problem with young women getting thinner we have a societal problem with them getting fat.

They are not skinny, and a heathy weight should always be the aspiration, we have an issue with obesity, sure anorexia exits for a small percentage of the population but obesity amongst young people is by far the bigger issue.

Except photoshop wasnt 'natural' last time I checked?

the point is that there are lots of women in the world that naturally look like them. photoshopped or not, they’re not unusual body types.

You can’t seriously think those are fat women photoshopped, those women are not photoshopped to look slimmer they are photoshopped to look more perfect.

It isn't the blaming of naturally slim people I am meaning.

It's this determination of lumping all this people together as healthy, when some are not, on the basis that we have all lost perspective and expect everyone to be fat.

There is still an unhealthy lower end. Calling people jealous or "trying to make themselves feel better" for calling certain shapes (not those on this thread, but they are evident in advertising and on SM) too thin is no better than normalising obesity.

anorexia is not caused by slim models.

That statement is an over-simplification.

As somebody who nearly died from an eating disorder I completely disagree.
Its not the cause, but its a part of it.

I’m not going to comment on the fat or thin thing, as I’ve been around since Twiggy was a girl, but those miserable faces, and slouchy stances! Stand up straight, slap a smile on your face, and let me see what the item actually looks like!

It’s not an unhealthy lower end, the very definition of a bmi range is it’s healthy, low and high end of s healthy bmi.

and yes it’s wrong to be attacking slim women and calling them too thin when they look and overwhelmingly are likely to be, based on dress size and height, as well as visuals, a healthy weight.

it’s like seeing a woman with a bmi of 23/24 and running round screeching she’s too fat and will cause hojng women to want to be fat. Its ridiculous

Correct. But models aren't always naturally thin. Anorexia and other eating disorders are pervasive within the modelling industry. To suggest otherwise would be utterly disingenuous.

I don't know about pervasive.

Try Googling 'eating disorders in the fashion industry'.

Whereas this article (Frequency of disordered eating habits among fashion models) does a good job of explaining how it's not quite that simple.

Yes not sure 3 percent is pervasive, pervasive means it’s throughout, when actually it would indicate 97 percent don’t have an eating disorder.

its like people genuinely can’t accept some people can be slim and not have an eating disorder, like there has to be something wrong with them if they are not fat.

i genuinely can’t beleive we have got to this stage, where people think this, or that healthy weight women look ill,

it’s utterly crazy

Speaking from experience here. Eating disorders might be triggered by looking at a photo, but what they trigger is an underlying propensity in the person to develop an eating disorder, very often about control over their own life.

So if that photo hadn't been seen, it would have been something else. A passing comment overheard, a popular fashion not looking good on you, bullying by siblings (hand up to this one).

Besides which, those photos are of healthy slim women and there is no way that they should be being censored.

Or, photoshop is so pervasive that people cant recognise when an image is photoshopped thinner. The models may not be anorexic but they may be photoshopped to a level that is. Not specifically about the photos here, but its incredibly common.

Of course it matters that they are photoshopped, because thats not their natural body type. You cant say they are naturally that thin if its photoshopped.

There is no way in hell some of them weigh as much as 9st 6! Maybe 8st 6.