Latest Female Fashion Trends -Skinny Craze

What's a Model Weight? Skinny? Fleshy? Hourglass? Waif-like?

Relationship Advice Expert April Masini

Advice Seeker: Dear April Masini,

Why are there so many skinny models?

Sincerely,

I'm Too Sexy For Size 0

April Masini's advice:

Dear I'm Too Sexy For Size 0:

When Brazilian supermodel Ana Carolina Reston died from anorexia recently, the Council of Fashion Designers of America issued guidelines to designers aimed at promoting healthy behaviors among fashion models. Will this work?

Promoting healthy behavior among fashion models will work for some models. It will bring attention to the issue of weight in the modeling business. However, promoting healthy behavior depends on a lot of things. If models’ mothers get up and speak out that their daughters and their daughters' peers are too thin, it’s one thing -- but if magazines, designers and store buyers put their money and their power where their hearts and mouths are, it’s an entirely other and more effective means of promotion. Will they do it? Here's what I'd like to see:

Magazine editors -- quit booking too skinny models!!

If magazine editors refuse to book models who are too skinny, and if designers refuse to book models who are too skinny, and if store buyers refuse to buy clothes off of designers who use models and model sizes that are too skinny, then the promotion will be much more effective.

This promotion is necessary only if someone wants to help promote health over fashion. Fashion has always been about appearance and trends — not health. It never was and it never will be. Smoking was fashionable, heroin chic was fashionable, and celebrity culture is fashionable. None of these three things are particularly good for anyone’s health, but they are what our society tends towards today. The reason is that our collective values are not about health, in general.

Big business, get your family values on!

Big has a tendency to overcome traditional values, and that’s exactly what’s happened to the modeling industry. Because pedophile chic sells, hot models now begin their careers at ages 12, 13, and 14, because it takes years for an agency to build a profitable super model, and few and far between are the models that can pull in the big bucks after age 30 – Super or not. Some modeling agencies won’t look seriously at girls who are over the age of 15, yet you can flip through any fashion magazine and see how many sexually provocative ads you find – using models who are “under age” when it comes to the sex they are selling. Yes, sex in advertising sells and it’s very typically teen models being used to sell sex – along with the products.

Most of the clothes that teen stars like Lindsey Lohan and Hilary Duff are photographed wearing would be in violation of the dress codes at many public schools, which ban spaghetti strap tops and bared midriffs during school hours. The reality today is, if you want to be hip and popular in junior high school, middle school, high school – and yes, even elementary school – you better look hot – and be hot! That’s the message being sent to our young, American girls who are on the verge of becoming women.

On a message board talking about the epidemic of 12, 13, and 14 year old oral sex, a mall sales clerk posts the following message: “In the junior’s department of this store, the clothing is smaller, tighter and more revealing. The girls almost have no choice but to buy these clothes, because that is all that the stores are selling!”

In fact, Abercrombie and Fitch was selling so many thongs to seven year olds that there is an online petition to stop them from doing so, signed by 1500 people. Since 2000 their “magalog,” a term referred to their catalogue that looks like a magazine, was boycotted by citizens who called it pornographic, and used their clothes to young people, by using sex. Their “blue” catalog has been under attack from the National Coalition for the protection of Children & Families.

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April Masini -- nicknamed "the new millennium's Dear Abby" by the media, is author of the best-selling books Date Out Of Your League and Think & Date Like A Man, the two (just released) step-by-step dating and relationship manuals, Ideas for a Fun Date and Romantic Date Ideas, and the critically acclaimed dating and relationship online magazine www.AskApril.com.