Vogue Italy’s cover shows “absurdly tiny” waistline
Summary of story from Womensenews, September 26, 2011
The cover of this month’s Vogue Italy features a model with a photoshopped 13-inch waistline, timed to appear during Italian Fashion Week from 21 to 28 September.
The cover features 40-year-old supermodel Stella Tennant wearing a roomy black gown, a rose ring and showing off an “absurdly tiny” waistline.
Fabiola De Clercq, founder of the Anorexia and Bulimic Association (ABA), an Italian group based in Milan which helps anorexic girls resume a healthy lifestyle says “it’s the worst way to attract readers”.
A survivor herself, De Clercq says: “Considering that Italian fashion week is going on, Vogue Italy would have done everything in its power to shock and be ‘unique.’ This picture mortifies women’s bodies”.
“Anorexia is such a widespread psychological disorder because, nowadays, thinness corresponds to women’s power.
“Exaggerated slimness is byword of a woman in total control over her life, someone who is even able to renounce a vital need: eating food….Vogue understood this deviant trend and showed it yet again.”
Carlo Ducci, the executive news director of the magazine, said the picture was “stunning and harmless”.
He said Tennant’s picture was inspired by Ethel Granger, an English woman who died in 1982 and was married to a corset maker. Her 13-inch waist was the smallest ever, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
“Our magazine drew on reality. If this reality is perceived as bad, this is not our problem,” Ducci said.
