Can we say ironic? Follow-up to Ralph Lauren Ad Fiasco

taylor

With models dropping like flies and dying of starvation , I think the result of his being irresponsible... Ralph Lauren may feel the backlash from this for some time .

16 years ago

marianna

Veteran

I'd LOVE to be 120 lbs "fat"!

16 years ago

Ana

(website)

Veteran

Me too Marianna! I'm only 5'3" and I've got a good 15-20 pounds on that model, which makes me laugh. The model looks great in the other photos, really healthy and pretty.

16 years ago

Maya

Veteran

I'm around 5 pounds less than that model but almost a foot shorter, so count me in the fatty mcpatty club!

Good for her for staying positive and confident. I hope it's genuine and that it lasts, and that she will see many better opportunities on the horizon. As for RL, good luck getting a model who lives up to their idiotic standards. Even the most malnourished, eating-disordered model is never going to look like that Photoshop disaster.

16 years ago

medusa

Veteran

Um, seriously????????

I really hope that it's just a rumor.

16 years ago

Louise

Veteran

I think they need to pop in here for a dose of reality! Not one real woman looks like that and to be quite honest every single woman on here looks far more beautiful than what they've created! It certainly wouldn't make me want to buy clothes from them in fact i walk out the shop thinking there's no point shopping in here i'm not skinny enough! That picture makes Victoria Beckham fat! and don't get me started on what i think of her i'd like to force feed her Cornish cream teas to fatten her up she looks like she needs to be on the anorexic ward!!! (rant over!)

Edit- and another thing! if they've sacked her for being fat, if i could afford to shop at Ralph Lauren which i can't, i certainly wouldn't be shopping there after that!

16 years ago

susand

Active Member

I think the photo looks ridiculous...It looks cartoonish and not even close to human. For someone working for a huge company - their photoshop skills really stink!

I am 5'3 and heavier than her and wear a 2 or 4...this is just soooooooo wrong.

16 years ago

RoseandJoan

Veteran

It's hard to know what to believe when the model was released from her contract SIX MONTHS AGO and not as a direct result of the photo shop incident. I would be curious to know if any model truly knew why her/his contract had been terminated.

In light of the recent furore, if you were in this particular models situation would you indulge in some self promotion?

16 years ago

Sarah

(website)

Veteran

http://gothamist.com/2009/10/1....._model.php
Interesting interview with the model herself.

16 years ago

Maya

Veteran

Everyone's reaction to that video annoys me. Poor gay men. They seem to be the scapegoats for all this (I don't even think Ralph Lauren is gay though, ironically).

Stephen Colbert did a report on this and it was hilarious in only a way Stephen Colbert could accomplish.

16 years ago

Angie

(website)

Fashion Stylist

Good one, Sarah! Love how you found that link. You are clever.

I think the model’s body is perfect for her line of work at 5ft 10 and 120 pounds. Like this, she does not look too thin or too fat at all. Model thin, but not too thin. Healthy, slim and beautiful – just like a model should look! Why she was fired is really anyone’s guess. It could be because of a multitude of things. They could be using her weight as an excuse.

What I find more interesting is how different the model looks in real life compared to her pictures. She looks so much softer and prettier in her pics. She’s very photogenic. Her look is more severe in real life. That’s how I see it anyway :0)

16 years ago

shana

Veteran

Sarah, that is a great video. It's so interesting to see the model IRL. Who knows why they fired her - maybe they thought she was too old now!??! Angie, I see what you mean - although for the brief moment when she almost smiled, she lost some of that severity. I also think it has to do with her brows.

What I find interesting is that most of the women that I know that wear alot of Ralph Lauren (other than preppy teenaged girls who love the skinny polos) are older, preppy women - like the ones who summer in the Hamptons on in Newport and they are far from stick thin.

16 years ago

Angie

(website)

Fashion Stylist

That’s SUCH an interesting point, Shana. Most models do not represent the target market they are modeling for. This model included. I don’t have a client under 60 in a RL item. Isn’t that interesting? None of the models who are the look for Chanel, Prada and LV represent the target market either. But then I guess the models for stores like Express, Abercrombie and Fitch and AE are very representative of the target market.

16 years ago

anne

Veteran

Angie, I agree that the model "looks" healthy etc but frankly I was a bit worried that 120 pounds at 5ft 10 would look so healthy because according to BMI calculations she would be underweight. I noticed one of the comments saying that they thought she probably weighed more to look the way she did.

I know that some people are just built like this, and are not unhealthy (I married into a family like that), but it still concerns me that you would consider this to be healthy (she would be under the limit at the Madrid Fashion show)
http://www.typicallyspanish.co.....5031.shtml.

(I briefly considered losing 20odd pounds so I too could be that "healthy" but decided that my already hardly A-cup bust would go into minus!)

16 years ago

Ana

(website)

Veteran

I personally think the model looks perfectly fine. I see no obvious protruding bones, and she doesn't look skeletonized to me (well, other than in the photoshopped photo).
I don't agree that BMI is an accurate measurement when it comes to decisions regarding a person's health on an individual level. All it does is correlate height and weight. It does not take into account a person's build, bone structure, or athleticism at all.

16 years ago

anne

Veteran

Ana - I agree that she looks fine too. I guess what I am trying to work out is if the fact that she looks okay means that the BMI thing is wrong, or if our images of what looks healthy is wrong.

I take your point about BMI not taking into account build etc (or age either). (I think there are some well understood problems related to very muscly individuals too) However my understanding was that because it gives quite a range of weights that that they would be the outer parameters and that the other factors would help you determine where in that range would be best for you.

16 years ago

Angie

(website)

Fashion Stylist

Anne, as Ana had already pointed out, its tricky to go by BMI’s and their parameters alone. The weight of your bones and muscle plays a role. I have a so called “un-healthy” BMI because I am very small boned and sport very little muscle. But I am just about as healthy as it gets. Also, I don’t look underweight or sickly. It’s just who I am and it’s a totally genetic thing. Greg on the other hand has heavy bones and lots of muscle and has a BMI that pops him into the almost overweight category – but he’s really slim. It’s just who he is.

The model looks absolutely fine to me Anne (her un-photo shopped self). Models are very slim and she actually looks a little more filled out than most – especially in the bust area. I am not saying that all 5ft 10 people should weigh 120 pounds. It’s just who she is.

16 years ago

Ana

(website)

Veteran

That's an interesting question, Anne, I think I understand what you were getting at now. I think people's perceptions of what looks healthy definitely changes over time. The idea of a "Healthy" or "attractive" weight (for women in particular) has certainly fluctuated throughout history.

I guess I get riled up about BMI because Quetelet (the man who originally developed the formula back in the 1800s) did some things in developing the BMI ratio which are kind of suspect, mathematically. Also, he was studying a large population of people (and BMI is still a population comparison tool today). It is essentially a giant bell curve (although a BMI chart doesn't actually look like a bell curve), that puts men, women, all builds and races (as Anne rightly pointed out) in the same curve. If you are closer to one of the tail ends of the curve, then you are deemed either "underweight" or "overweight," in comparison to the rest of the population. If you are somewhere near the middle, then you are considered to be a "normal" weight. That's the key. As an individual, you may not actually be under or overweight (as Angie pointed out). That's why I don't take much stock in it. There have been some modifications to take into account whether you are female or male, and there's a specific BMI for children which puts them in percentiles in comparison with other children their sex and age (the same bell curve concept) but I think there are a lot more factors that go into whether someone is a healthy weight or not. So many more, that I think BMI is actually a fairly useless measurement unless you are only interested in seeing how height and weight correlate across a large population.

Sorry, end math rant.

16 years ago

anne

Veteran

Ooh Ana - thanks for interesting Maths perspective. I'd like to find out more about what you were saying.(not right now though - I'm going to bed!)

16 years ago

Ana

(website)

Veteran

I'm glad I didn't scare anyone away. Anne, I like the wikipedia article on BMI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index

It goes a bit into the math without getting overly complicated, and I think it's objective, not arguing for or against it. It talks a bit about the history and how BMI is used today.

16 years ago

Maya

Veteran

Hmm, about what we consider to be a healthy weight:

I read a BBC article once about our perceptions of healthy weight vs the reality. They did a study where they showed photographs of people of varying sizes to a group of panelists and asked them to describe whether or not the people in the photos were overweight, obese, normal, or underweight. Very consistently, the panelists underestimated the subjects' weight and size.

To be fair, I don't know what formula was used to determine where people in the photos fell on the obesity scale. If it was by BMI, that throws a wrench into the whole thing.

The conclusion was that since more people are overweight and obese than not, our perception of "normal' has been significantly distorted.

I'm not giving my personal perspective on the study, but it's food for thought.

16 years ago

medusa

Veteran

I just have to throw in another comment on BMI: the scaling. BMI assumes body mass scales as height squared, which is definitely wrong. If people of different heights have the same proportions, body mass should scale as height cubed (because volume increases as the cube of the linear dimension of an object). Proportions do vary so using the exponent 3 isn't perfect (the wikipedia article says the best-fit exponent is 2.6). This means that BMI is particularly bad for unusually large or small people. It's silly.

16 years ago

Angie

(website)

Fashion Stylist

Very interesting mathematical explanations from Ana and Medusa. Definitely food for thought, Maya.

At the end of the day I trust my eyeballs. This particular model looks great at that height and weight. But someone with a different physique but at the same height could look wretchedly underweight. Still going with my eyes :0)

16 years ago

Maya

Veteran

I prefer the eyeball method too, but it can lead to some unfair conclusions.

When I was 20 or 21 I had to go to the ER because I was extremely sick and couldn't even keep water down. Eventually I passed out. Anyway, I regained consciousness by the time the ambulance came and was asked REPEATEDLY if I had a history of eating disorders or if I was "purging" (I didn't even know what that meant at the time). Of COURSE I looked gaunt and awful. First of all I was naturally thin at that time, then on top of that I was sick and unable to eat or drink for days. It made me so angry!

16 years ago

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