Heather Green
Freelance writer*
The Internet and celebrity news programmes have been buzzing about model Ioana Spangenberg, who claims to have a naturally occurring 20-inch waist.
You heard that right. Without the aid of corsets, extreme dieting, or surgery, this Romanian-born model claims to have a waist that’s not much bigger than a compact disc.
Not only does she claim that her waist size is naturally occurring, but she also claims that no matter what she does, she just can’t pad her middle.
“No one seems to believe it, but every day I eat three big meals and I snack on chocolate and crisps all the time. I just have a small stomach,” she told The Sun.
Um, no, I don’t believe it. In addition to having unnatural proportions, the 5-foot-6-inch model weighs only 84 pounds.
This is not the figure that you get snacking on “chocolate and crisps all the time” — unless you have a medical condition or you’re hovering over a toilet bowl post-meal. A high metabolism would not lead to being so severely underweight.
What is even more disturbing than the image of this woman is the reaction that the media has given her. The attention she has garnered could be a result of novelty. It is a curious thing to see what amounts to a living skeleton.
Even more noteworthy is the kind of attention she’s not getting. There has been no outcry from media outlets about the unhealthy body image that this model is promoting, and no one has questioned her claims that her size is the result of her natural body chemistry.
I mean, they asked, and she said she doesn’t diet. What else is there? The lack of skepticism suggests an admiration for her size. We don’t want to question her. We want to believe that such victories in thinness are possible.
The fact that Spangenberg is modeling at all and is not a circus act instead is cause for concern. Models are held up as ideals for feminine beauty. They are meant to showcase the possibilities for fashion if worn by the right shape in the right way.
Promoting this unnaturally thin form can lead to unhealthy habits and ideals in young girls and women.
Rader Programs, which specializes in treating eating disorders, reports that 20 years ago, the average fashion model weighed eight percent less than the average woman, and today, she weighs 23 percent less.
The institute also reports that 79 percent of teenage girls who vomit and 73 percent of teenage girls who use diet pills are frequent readers of women’s health and fitness magazines.
Over the years, the models have gotten thinner and eating disorders and body image issues have become more prevalent in our society. Is this just a coincidence?
What are your thoughts about this “human hourglass” model? Do you believe her claims about her eating habits and her naturally unnatural shape? Do you think images of women like this are harmful to other women and young girls?
Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
*Heather Green is a freelance writer for several regional magazines in North Carolina as well as a resident blogger for onlinenursingdegrees.org. Her writing experience includes fashion, business, health, agriculture and a wide range of other topics.
I have just googled pics of this model and I cannot believe how thin she is. It is frightening that she is being lauded, when she should be in hospital. Awful.
Hmm. I’ve no idea whether she’s as ‘natural’ as she claims, though it’s strange even with an eating disorder to gain that kind of shape. I don’t know, but I am sure that’s it’s just as ‘shaming’ to attack women for being ‘too thin’ as being ‘too fat’. It’s all the same message: women’s bodies are never RIGHT. Read any gossip mag and see any female celeb being chastised for being ‘too porky’ one week, then ‘too skeletal’ the next. Many women are ‘naturally’ thin and a thin body shape is as ‘natural’ as any other. And if this woman is bulimic or whatever, a critique of the culture that has caused her to become so doesn’t have to include attacks on her (a ‘circus act’? really?). Hate the game, not the player.
I have no inherent problem with believing that she is naturally that shape; I don’t think we need to call women liars to find it problematic that she has a modelling career based on it. This is not mere skinniness: her bone structure is qualitatively different. It is no exaggeration (and not intended as an insult, either) to say that she is deformed. Whether naturally that shape or whether she has been corseted, her shape is a deformity of the ‘normal’ human body. ‘Normal’ is a very wide-ranging term, covering the super-skinny to the very large; even so, it’s my suspicion that she has a skeletal abnormality. She may be perfectly healthy and in no more need of a hospital than anyone ‘normal’-shaped, but yes it is worrying that she has mainstream attention. Not that I want to see anyone in a freak show, but neither do I think we need more and yet more images promoting unattainable figures (and whether her shape is natural for her or not, you can bet your life she will be copied) in the meedja.
Yes, I wasn’t trying to criticise the model personally as I recognise that body fascism goes from thin to fat and all of it is not desirable. As MezzoPiana says, the real problem is that her body is being lauded as something to aim at in my opinion. And, in my opinion, her weight
appears dangerously close to those who suffer severe anorexia – so the image appears to be promoting starvation as a fashion statement.