Goran Jakus

The modeling industry is ruining the confidence of adolescents

The modeling industry is infamously known for being a toxic environment to its models and workers. It promotes models to stop eating and to slim their size down, which brings down their mental health. Models all over the world have faced the toxicity of being in the industry. What I think is absurd is why people who run the industry would want to torture their models so much that they could pass out while walking. The models falling on stage wouldn’t help their look anyway so there is no reason for them to degrade their models.
The unrealistic beauty standards that Victoria’s Secret Angels specifically bring to young, impressionable adolescents is outrageous. Former model Bridget Malcolm spoke out not too long ago on the fact that she was pressured to lose weight and sexually assaulted while being a model for Victoria Secret. AnnElise Reynolds, a junior at Millbrook told me her experience being a model. She said, “We are told sometimes to suck in our stomach a bit to look smaller. I’ve noticed they don’t like seeing chin fat, another thing we are told is to press your tongue to the roof of our mouths for our jawline to look ‘more appealing.’ It’s hard to hear that type of thing because it makes us feel insecure and want to ‘fix’ our bodies.”
When growing up I played with Barbies like any other young girl. My mom was not a fan of Barbies and Disney Princesses because she worried they would affect how I feel about myself and my body image. There was no avoiding it though; every girl around me was playing with dolls and then so was I. Growing up with Barbie dolls didn’t affect me as much as growing up with social media did though. I never thought badly of my body until I joined social media and realized there were beauty standards I was supposed to follow. Just like being a model, they expect women on social media to be skinny, naturally beautiful, and unopinionated.
Brooke Carter, an apparel teacher at Millbrook, told me “Models will become overly hyper critical of their image and fixate on what they eat so their mental health will decline with this fixation, [and] it could possibly demonize their relationship with food.” I feel like this is a very informational and realistic opinion because as I got older I always thought it would be amazing to be able to model. Now, looking back on it, I know that being a model would only bring down my mental health, like it does for most models.
A lot of models in the industry start to restrict the food they eat or stop eating in total which is unhealthy and dangerous. With all the working out they are required to do paired with constantly walking on the runway or spending days doing a shoot on an almost empty stomach, they could become dizzy, nauseous, and even pass out. I have dealt with the body image issues and the eating struggles of any teenage girl so I can’t even imagine how hard it is to be pressured to have bad habits to keep your income coming.
“I think we all even just subconsciously compare ourselves to others, especially with social media. I don’t think we take into consideration how hard their life may be outside of the screen, what they go or have gone through, or how many retakes, angles or editing had been done,” Reynolds said.
Another bad thing about the beauty standards with models is that some brands have been pushed to include plus size models due to the fact that the industry has never been inclusive. While on its face, this is a good thing, the second brands started to include these plus sized models or even models with disabilities the industry didn’t get backfire but the models did. They were told they were not good enough because they didn’t look like ‘the perfect model.’ On this topic Ms.Carter said, “I think the hate on plus size models or even special needs models is showing our societies lack of acceptance that everyone is different and should be accepted no matter how they differ from what society always accepted as ‘normal.’”
Overall the toxic outlook on how models and just women look and how their bodies are shaped can negatively affect adolescents.