by Jane Eisner
Knight Ridder-Tribune
The spring fashion collections that strutted down the runways in New York last week are, according to some of the snootier critics, an unimaginative throwback to the 1950s, evoking an era of pastel domesticity, illusory safety, even a kind of Eisenhower dullness.
The fashionistas will cluck and chatter and have their say; this is their moment, after all. When the rest of us bother to look at photographs of models in impossibly short shorts and scandalously see-through blouses, we are likely to see something else:
Thin.
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Very thin.
So thin that bones protrude and backsides disappear and every bodily shape seems airbrushed away. Even hair is as slender as spaghetti.
When I think of the 1950s, I think of women who filled out their Peter Pan-collared blouses and bouncy, pleated skirts, seeking to equal Marilyn Monroe's generous curves. In today's revisionist fashion scene, the "retro" clothes look as if they could be worn only by women who've subsisted on naked lettuce and bancha twig tea for a month.
The waif look is, unfortunately, not new in contemporary fashion and no stranger in a popular culture dominated by images of 90-pound actresses. But in perusing the latest runway photos, I realized that they looked chillingly similar to the pictures posted on pro-anorexia Web sites that have caused such concern in the mental-health community.
These online societies of the starving are extolling a perverted vision of beauty and perfection that is only a few pounds shy of what paraded down last week's runways. You can see why eating disorders are so prevalent among a certain sliver of America. The glorification of thinness is reinforced at every turn.
In a nation of affluence and abundance, there are now mini-societies of those who will not eat - or will not eat very much, or will only eat Atkins, or Zone, or on odd days of the week. Where once such behavior was a personal secret, now it is a stylish form of group identity.
"Diets have always been woven into the life of the image-conscious," wrote Kate Betts in last Sunday's New York Times, "but it used to be something you didn't admit - like the model `sent away' to drop five pounds before she could work again. Now, diets are discussed openly, unashamedly, cheerfully. Having a diet is almost... de rigueur."
There are important differences between the faddishness of the fashion set and the serious mental illness afflicting the 12 million to 13 million people - mostly women - who suffer from anorexia and bulimia. Staring at the pages of Vogue won't automatically turn someone anorexic. Nor will online sites infect a user the way that the bombardment of violent images on television may affect a child's behavior.
But those who treat patients with eating disorders worry that the explosion of "pro-ana" (pro-anorexia) and "pro-mia" (pro-bulimia) sites can trigger dangerous feelings and behaviors among the vulnerable.
"I wouldn't want the women I treat looking at these Web sites," said Ellen Davis, clinical director of the Renfrew Center in Philadelphia. "They push people to think, `If I can look like that, I will be what they are.' These sites are very destructive."
The photographs of skeletal girls and women are not the only disturbing features of these sites. Even worse is the way that anorexia - which has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disease - is viewed not as an illness but as a lifestyle, a religion, a source of comfort and even pride among those who believe they are strong enough to defy nature by suppressing hunger.
Anorexia and bulimia were once isolating diseases. With the Internet, they take on the attributes of a cult. Eating-disorder organizations and other advocates have tried to disband this virtual cult by pushing the sites off mainstream venues such as Yahoo and AOL. But the Internet is a wiry adversary: Squash activity in one place, and it will pop up somewhere else.
At a time when obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in America, it seems the ultimate irony that ever-younger victims of eating disorders are showing up in doctors' offices. Ironic, but understandable.
The nation may consider itself an outsized political, military and economic power, but its vision of beauty is an extra-small. Sometimes I think the entire nation suffers from an eating disorder of one kind or another. We eat either too much, or not at all.
Jane R. Eisner is a columnist for Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by e-mail at jeisner@phillynews.com.
