Anorexia Fashion Ads Statement Controversy
September 29th, 2007 Posted by: Dr. Cox
In the midst of Milan’s all-important Fashion Week, the picture that is turning heads in Italy is a shocking one. An Italian advertising campaign featuring photos of an Italian label, Nolita, an emaciated girl is supposed to serve as a warning to young women, but medical experts fear it could encourage anorexia and other eating disorders. It’s the latest work by controversial Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani.
It shows what anorexia looks like stripped bare. And, it is re-igniting the debate in the fashion industry over whether designers should make sure that the models who appear on their catwalks are really healthy.
French actress Isabelle Caro, 27, who has suffered anorexia for 15 years and weighs just 31 kilograms appears in the adverts next to the slogan “No Anorexia.”
“When I see myself now, I say, ‘what a horror,’” Caro told a French TV interviewer. “I’m trying to get out of it, and I want young women to know that is possible.”
The campaign, for fashion label Nolita, Flash&Partners is intended to show the reality of anorexia — an illness the company says that “in most cases is caused by the stereotypes imposed on women by the fashion world.”
Clothing designers and the government this week praised the ad for targeting anorexia, but endocrinologist Fabrizio Jacoangeli warned the campaign risked creating “competition” among anorexic people to be like the woman in the photograph.
“When you do something extreme, there are always people who oppose it,” Toscani said. “It shouldn’t be the photos that shock, but the reality.”
The Italian photographer said he became aware of anorexia while working in the fashion world.
“It’s this milieu that influences women to go on diets, to become thin. I studied the disease while making a short film about a 16-year-old girl suffering from anorexia that was shown at the Locarno (Italy) film festival in 2006,” he said.
However, the campaign has already alienated some of the very people who champion the cause Nolita is trying to embrace. And it has also stirred up controversy over whether the brand is raising awareness about anorexia, or possibly profiting from it.
“This girl needs to be in a hospital, not at the forefront of an advertising campaign,” said Fabiola De Clercq, founder and president of ABA, the Italian association against anorexia, bulimia and obesity.
Ms. De Clercq, who says she suffered from anorexia for more than 20 years, called the ads “useless and dangerous.” She said the campaign “glorifies a woman who is sick and could lead others to be sickly thin because of all the attention.”
