Why the skinny model debate needs to be settled

MELISSA Hoyer takes the skinny model debate head on, and calls on high profile models to take on a spokesperson role for his and her comrades.  

Fashion Week

HERE we go. The 'skinny model' debate rears its head. Again. Just as Mercedes Benz Fashion Week kicks into gear.

It's a debate that will never be over until the fat lady si... Oh. It's the fashion industry. She ain't ever going to sing.

Just two months ago I wrote about how, at the start of a 'new' fashion season, there are often cries of 'Off with their bodies!' as a slew of perceived emaciated, bony, wafer-thin clothes horses are about to trot down a runway. And for once, it didn't happen! Yippee.

Until now.

One 'top model', who asked not to be named in Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, said she spent yesterday starving.

"They haven't fed us at all today," says the report.

"I had four juices this morning because I couldn't get my hands on anything else and I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I'm going to die', until I got my hands on a cheese and tomato sandwich."

Umm, there is a thing called a shop. And a wallet. Maybe think about buying or bringing your own lunch into work, like the rest of us do!

We all know by now that historically, models are tall, slim men and women. They are genetic freaks. Long, lean, lanky chicks who look nothing like the rest of us.

A model is booked because she/he is a coat hanger, there to play second fiddle to a pricey piece of designer clothing. And before everyone goes all 'but they don't depict what 'real' women look like, I agree. They absolutely do not.

But 'real' isn't what many of us don't want to see. We don't want any more 'real' in our already too real lives.

The contradiction is that I have heard sniggers come from audience members if a model dares show a little cellulite. Or a tummy. Or some back fat.

We diss a model if she is lofty and lithe, then doubly diss her if she has the 'fat' that most of us already have.

I haven't heard complaints about the height of a basketballer or the weight of a sumo, but it is models who seem to get the grief.

Modelling is absolutely not about that god-awful Heroin Chic look that was championed in the 90s, which also lead many people to assume every model either had an eating disorder or was a junkie.

Having sat through hundreds and hundreds of runway shows in designer capitals around the world, in shopping malls and retail stores, it will always be healthy and yes, slim, clothes-hanger types of girls who will be booked by fashion designers and get work as models.

If this 'debate' really wants to kick in, wouldn't we like to see high profile, articulate and mega successful models, in the Megan Gale and Jen Hawkins mould, turn into commentators for their modelling peers?

It's all good for magazine editors and fashion commentators like me to go on and on about it, but let's really hear from the people who are being criticised.

Perhaps it is time, oh modelling industry types, to elect one of your own so we really can hear the real story?