Spring Break
The Daily OrangeNewhouse's fashion program targets wrong issues
By Lauren Shopp
Posted: 3/8/07, 12:14 AM EST Section: Opinion
On Tuesday, Mary-Kate Olsen's barely-there body makes us grimace. On Thursday, we applauded Nicole Richie for reaching a whopping 99 pounds. In public, we talk with disgust about celebrities' shrinking waists, but when we're alone, we feel insecure about wearing a size six - because, to quote "The Devil Wears Prada," four is the new six.
Our society's obsession with the perfect body might have something to do with one in every 100 women between the ages of 10 and 20 having an eating disorder. And a study conducted by the National Institute on Media and the Family reported that by age 17, 78 percent of girls are "very dissatisfied" with their bodies. The biggest culprit in recycling and projecting images of unrealistic, unhealthy beauty norms is the media.
That's why I had to look twice when I saw posters in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications advertising a fashion communications milestone program.
The program, offered to undergraduate students in Newhouse and fashion design students in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, combines courses in the history of fashion and communications. Through theory, skills and professional experience, students are, according to advertising professor Carla Lloyd, taught to think critically about issues within fashion and beauty communication. Lloyd said that if even a handful of students leave the program with the initiative to make a change within the industry, she will be satisfied.
Whether students graduating with an increased knowledge of the industry will affect change within the fashion world is doubtful. One Newhouse alumna, Patrice Adcroft, lost her job as editor in chief of Seventeen when she dared to include "normal" models in the publication. Advertisers backed out, models boycotted and designers refused to send clothes.
Change happens at a slow pace, but even Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty cannot ignore the statistics. Twenty years ago, it was estimated that the average model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman - today, that model weighs 23 percent less, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. That model - 5-foot-11 inches tall, 117 pounds - is two percentage points below an underweight Body Mass Index. When powerhouse designer Marc Jacobs uses a pre-pubescent Dakota Fanning to model his clothing, we realize even the smallest victories are the equivalent of a single snowflake in the midst of a nor'easter.
If Newhouse wants to affect real social change through its curriculum, it must begin offering programs that speak to a variety of interests and issues. At a time when global warming destroys the environment, seemingly never-ending war kills thousands of our peers, and AIDS ravages sections of an entire continent, there are, arguably, other pressing issues at stake - like the future of planet earth and life as we know it. In the meantime, let's leave it to Dove's soaps and lotions to make everyone feel good about wearing a size six - that is, until zero is the new six.
Lauren Shopp is a guest columnist for The Daily Orange. E-mail her at lauren.shopp@gmail.com.
Our society's obsession with the perfect body might have something to do with one in every 100 women between the ages of 10 and 20 having an eating disorder. And a study conducted by the National Institute on Media and the Family reported that by age 17, 78 percent of girls are "very dissatisfied" with their bodies. The biggest culprit in recycling and projecting images of unrealistic, unhealthy beauty norms is the media.
That's why I had to look twice when I saw posters in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications advertising a fashion communications milestone program.
The program, offered to undergraduate students in Newhouse and fashion design students in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, combines courses in the history of fashion and communications. Through theory, skills and professional experience, students are, according to advertising professor Carla Lloyd, taught to think critically about issues within fashion and beauty communication. Lloyd said that if even a handful of students leave the program with the initiative to make a change within the industry, she will be satisfied.
Whether students graduating with an increased knowledge of the industry will affect change within the fashion world is doubtful. One Newhouse alumna, Patrice Adcroft, lost her job as editor in chief of Seventeen when she dared to include "normal" models in the publication. Advertisers backed out, models boycotted and designers refused to send clothes.
Change happens at a slow pace, but even Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty cannot ignore the statistics. Twenty years ago, it was estimated that the average model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman - today, that model weighs 23 percent less, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. That model - 5-foot-11 inches tall, 117 pounds - is two percentage points below an underweight Body Mass Index. When powerhouse designer Marc Jacobs uses a pre-pubescent Dakota Fanning to model his clothing, we realize even the smallest victories are the equivalent of a single snowflake in the midst of a nor'easter.
If Newhouse wants to affect real social change through its curriculum, it must begin offering programs that speak to a variety of interests and issues. At a time when global warming destroys the environment, seemingly never-ending war kills thousands of our peers, and AIDS ravages sections of an entire continent, there are, arguably, other pressing issues at stake - like the future of planet earth and life as we know it. In the meantime, let's leave it to Dove's soaps and lotions to make everyone feel good about wearing a size six - that is, until zero is the new six.
Lauren Shopp is a guest columnist for The Daily Orange. E-mail her at lauren.shopp@gmail.com.
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