For me this is a bit (insert cliché...) 'ass about face'. Whilst I appreciate and indeed share concern for those young people said to be protected by these changes, I fear this is not really the only motive. Amongst the many changes include requirements for clothing labels to include sizes to reflect the wider societal needs - i.e making clothes for fatties. Instead of educating the youth about health issues, nutrition, excess and exercise, they're choosing to punish an industry that has always been based around ideals. Being a model is not about being 'average' - it's about making things look good so that people want to buy them. It is, after all, a business.
One of the main concerns is also the publication and advertising for 'rapid weight loss' and cosmetic surgery etc. Unfortunately the issue of cosmetic surgery is a different one which I won't discuss at the moment, to save from drifting away from my point. The whole reason these drastic diets and parasitic, poorly constructed weight loss companies advertise and continue to thrive is because Westerners are getting fatter by the day. We live in a culture surrounded by sugar, convenience food, over processed carbohydrates, 'food science' (and yet again another important discussion) and takeaways - and yet people sit in dumbfounded wonder as to why they can't lose weight. They sit on their couch every night after stuffing their faces full of McDonald's, coke and chocolate cake, and wake up in the morning complaining about how they can never win their 'battle' with weight loss.
This is not to say that concerns over body issues are not legitimate or important. My point is that instead of fixing the root of the problem, we are more concerned with treating the symptoms. Any medical professional will tell you that management of the symptoms is no cure. If we don't equip everyone with the ability and the knowledge to control their body, and then thrust them into a world full of fat building, heart disease inducing brands then we end up in this current situation: our societal waistlines are growing - but we appear to be more worried about how we 'feel' about it than actually fixing it.
The other crock is this nonsense of a 'healthy BMI'. The Body-Mass Index is a load of shit and is an appalling reference tool for anyone muscular. It makes no reference to the amount of fat stored in your body, and no reference to its relationship with the amount of muscle making up your overall body composition. A muscular person can easily fall into the 'overweight' category whilst having a very healthy body fat percentage.
So we take skinny models out of the public eye. Then what? Everyone feels better about themselves but we continue to get fatter, and fatter, and fatter. We don't tax the takeaway companies, there is no tax relief or incentives for companies producing healthy products (invariably they are more expensive than crap food), and the government and media are focussed on peoples' feelings. Feelings which, as I have pointed out, stem directly from a lack of education and inability to control their body. Being 'skinny' or 'muscular' are not unattainable goals - every day, every soft drink and every meal is a choice and your body is the sum of those choices.
Obesity and its related issues are a FAR greater concern and health burden on society here in New Zealand and indeed almost universally across Western society. America, the UK and Australia lead the way in the morbid obesity statistics yet we seem so protective over peoples' rights to be fat and not be criticised for a lifestyle of lethargy and excess. Instead people would rather punish an industry that has ALWAYS based itself on the ideal and aspirational. Do we punish the excessively beautiful for being in magazines because we will never look like them? People make choices with their wallets and their votes - if they didn't find skinny and muscular models aspirational then there wouldn't be a market for it.
Fix the cause of the problem, don't just put a band-aid on it.
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