Don't believe what you see

The news was abuzz this week about Ralph Lauren model, Filippa Hamilton, who recently appeared in an ad looking frightfully emaciated.  The clothing company eventually confessed to the mistake, saying it was having a bad Photoshop day. But now the National Organization for Women is demanding a further apology, to women everywhere for the company's alleged obsession with portraying extreme thinness, and preferably also to Filippa Hamilton, the model in the ad who was fired by Ralph Lauren after years of being one of its top models. Hamilton said the clothier found her 120-pound girth on a 5-foot-10 body -- translating to a size 4 -- too  bulky to fit into its sample sizes. The company denies that's why she was fired.

The story reminds me of an early trigger of my own obsession. I distinctly remember my 15-year-old self reading an issue of Seventeen magazine, and coming across an ad for the cologne, Cachet. The accompanying photo was of a headless torso and the copy read, “This is _______ (I forget her name). She has a 22 inch waist. That little middle is her trademark – that and Cachet.” Having garnered much positive reinforcement for my petiteness, and not wanting to be outdone by anyone, I grabbed a tape measure and was horrified to see my waist at almost 23 inches. I had to make it smaller! Thus began the era of restriction, exercise, and self-torture. I can recall doing my high school homework with a scarf cinched excruciatingly tightly around my midsection like a tourniquet; I was desperate to be like that headless woman in the magazine…

I was a statistic; a victim of culture that believed you could never be too rich or too thin. Has anything changed in the last few decades? Science now reveals that girls’ self-esteem plummets after just a few minutes of looking at fashion magazines. And now with digital methods of altering photos, the images that are presented are more and more unrealistic, yet millions of young women believe they can and they should aspire to look like what they see.