Fashion models are so thin because the rest of us are so fat

Wow, I just finished reading an interesting column in the Washington Post about the rise of the waif and the uber-thin model.

According to Robin Givhan, the culture of “thinner is better” is directly attributed to the fact that fashion, an aspirational business in the first place, is surrounded by overweight and obese people who are desperately clinging to unrealistic goals. She cites no studies or surveys to back up her assertion, and correlation does not imply causation, but I found her arguments to be persuasive:

By its very nature, fashion is a business of falsehoods and costumes, all in service to self-definition. The uncomfortable truth about the fashion industry is it has a knack for tapping into unspoken cultural obsessions and taboos. Fashion sets up a rarefied world of perfection that is, in many ways, defined by how much it differs from the mundane, from the norm. And all indicators suggest that as a culture, we hate what we are becoming: fat.

Touché.