"This should be an industry of beauty and luxury, not famished-looking people that look pale and sick.”

Said David Bonnouvrier (who runs a top modeling agency). There's a lot of talk about too-thin models lately, with calls to ban models who fall outside the World Health Organizations definition of normal. There are concerns that the models are damaging their own health and that they are inspiring other women to take up health-impairing practices. I note that articles on this subject, like the linked one, always include a photograph of a super-thin models who has freakishly shaped legs.

But I'm especially interested in Bonnouvier's statement. The fashion industry invites us to indulge ourselves and spend large sums of money on beautiful clothing. But it also constantly shapes and reshapes what is seen as beautiful. If this wasn't changed all the time, we wouldn't need to buy so many new clothes. The industry must be about changing our perceptions of what clothes are beautiful, and along with that comes the ability to change what we think about how the models look. Hair, makeup, facial features, body shapes -- these are all part of fashion and all part of the idea of the beautiful that the fashion industry shapes. Most of the criticism of the ultra-thin models says that it is evil for the industry to convince us that something unhealthy is beautiful. But this kind of chiding can make thinness seem rebellious and transgressive, and that will stimulate some thinsuasts.

So let me focus on this idea that to be thin is not luxurious. It doesn't fit with the invitation to self-indulgence. We're asked to love pleasure and to deny pleasure. The very thin woman embodies extreme self-denial, discipline, and abstemiousness. If we really believed in the values her thin-seeking behavior represented, we would become skinflints about spending money on luxuries. We'd become clothing minimalists. That would not be in the interest of the fashion industry.

Instead of looking at these models and trying to think up a very extreme, rigid diet for your nutrition, why not think up an extreme, rigid diet for your wardrobe? There's much less suffering involved, and you will save time and money.