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THE MODEL TRISH GOFF IS, BY the cold measure of her profession, a woman of some amplitude. According to People magazine, the average model today runs about 33-23-33. Goff's agent, Cyril Brule, says she's actually bigger, by an extra inch at the waist and a half inch around the hips. To see how those measurements stack up, take a good look at her picture on this page, which ran in the June issue of British Vogue magazine. When the Goff pictorial hit the stands, Giles Rees, British marketing manager of the Omega Watch Corp., announced that the company would stop its ads. In a May 23 letter that began with a lengthy complaint about how Omega watches were displayed in another spread, Rees decried the ""anorexic proportions'' of the ""skeletal'' models, which he found ""extremely distasteful.'' A week later, though, the company retreated, saying it had no interest in influencing editorial content.
From Twiggy to Kate Moss, the fashion industry has been attacked for idealizing such extreme slenderness, encouraging real women to hate their own bodies -- and, at the extreme, to develop anorexia or bulimia. But the criticisms have sharpened, as models like Amber Valetta and Stella Tennant have cut steadily more dramatically spare figures. The Rhodes Farm clinic in London recently revealed that one of its ""sickest patients,'' a severely anorexic 15-year-old, was courted by two mod- eling reps. The girl stands 5 feet 7 and weighs 98 pounds. Photographers, eager to make a splash, style the models to look decadent and wasted. In spread after spread models appear desexed, easily broken. Few psychologists believe fashion spreads directly cause eating disorders. But, they argue, media images contribute to a ""climate'' that can lead to anorexia or bulimia.
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Both the emaciated images and their critics fit another shift in our cultural weather. At a time when women have gained power in society, we are awash in depictions of teenage girls as passive victims -- of abuse, of the oversexualized media, of predatory boys -- and of girlhood as damage and degradation. Top-selling singers like Courtney Love, Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos present themselves as adults (more or less) mining or avenging the wounds of the wonder years. ""Slap me with the splintered ruler,'' sings Morissette, recalling the pain; Love describes herself as ""Doll Parts,'' an evocation of childhood brutalized. Critically acclaimed movies like ""Welcome to the Dollhouse'' and last summer's ""Kids'' -- which followed a ""virgin surgeon'' on the prowl -- show girls as prey. The book ""Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls,'' by Mary Pipher, contends that ""girls are in trouble,'' and that the ""suffering'' is ""universal and extreme.'' It remains a No. 1 best seller two and a half years after publication.
The deeper interest in girls is overdue; we've dipped deep enough into the angst of James Dean and Holden Caulfield. And there is cause for concern. A study last week noted that teenage girls had caught up with boys in drinking and illegal drug use. But there is a risk to recirculating images of girls as powerless victims. As the critics of fashion point out, our pop culture has the power to shape as well as reflect. And a culture that tells girls they're victims is no better than one that tells girls they're objects. Psychologist Michael Levine of Kenyon College, who has studied the impact of media on eating disorders, notes that our current obsession with anorexia and bulimia may be adding to them. ""It glorifies them. They're a way to get on the cover of a magazine.'' The new concern over girls is certainly a step forward. But it is also a step back.
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