Designers still want their models to look anorexic

Waif thin models are still the reigning queens of runways despite sustained campaigns to stop young models from starving themselves into skinniness – and designers are to blame.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) recently held an event dubbed “The Beauty of Health: How the Fashion Industry Can Make a Difference” at Milk Studios as part of its awareness program.

Since holding its first health symposium last year, the CFDA has sent letters to designers, agents and stylists reminding them of the importance of health.

The trade organization has also recommended guidelines, such as allowing no girls under 16 to work without the presence of their mothers.

The problem, however, is that the CFDA has resisted imposing regulations, as Spain has done by banning some models based on a body-mass index.

According to Women's Wear Daily (WWD), a fashion-industry trade journal sometimes called “the bible of fashion”, things are not really going the way as the CFDA is hoping.

In a recent fashion show, model Coco Rocha said: "She wakes up in the morning, goes to the bathroom to take a shower, and runs by the full-length mirror because she can't bear to look at herself naked. She only weighs 104 pounds, but all she can think is, I need to be thinner."

People in the industry have been no help, Rocha told WWD's Marc Karimzadeh.

"They said, 'You need to lose more weight - the look this year is anorexia, and although we don't want you to be anorexic, we want you to look it,’” the New York Post quoted Rocha, as telling WWD.

"My question is, how do you look anorexic unless you actually are?" Rocha added.