Body Image Activist, Eating Disorders mamaVISION

Who the hell is this pro-ana chick?

CRYSTAL FRICKIN’ RENN.

Yes, Renn, the PROUD plus size model and author of Hungry. Renn said she was stunned when a photographer for a charity fashion shoot gave her a digital slim-down (and heroin chic eyes no less) that prompted a flurry of questions about her body image.

The photos in question, shot by photographer Nicholas Routzen, show a suddenly svelte Renn in a tank top benefiting Fashion for Passion, a charity that funds arts education for children.

“When I first saw the pictures, I have to say I was absolutely shocked. I think I sat in silence for a good five minutes,” Renn said today on NBC’s “Today” show. “I don’t think it’s an accurate portrayal of my body in any way. I’m a size 10, and that is more like a size 2.”

Renn wasn’t the only one who did a double-take. The fashion blogosphere jumped into overdrive, comparing “before” pictures of a healthy looking Renn at the photo shoot with the drastically trimmed “after” shots. The contrast between the two is especially evident at Jezebel.com, where readers traced Renn’s original frame and superimposed it on her whittled-down one.

“It’s striking to see how much she’s been downsized all over — from the shoulders to the hips to the thighs,” Jezebel wrote.

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Compounding the “scandal,” Renn, who has graced the covers of Glamour and Harper’s Bazaar, was accused of abandoning her “plus size and proud” message, after encouraging women to love their bodies at all sizes in her memoir, “Hungry,” which chronicled her battles with eating disorders. The New York Post wondered whether her perceived weight loss proved her message to be a “big fat lie.”

Though she set the record straight, Renn said she, too, was concerned about young women feeling like they had lost her as a role model.

“I want them to know I’m healthy,” she told “Today.” “Beauty is not a pants size and that’s what I’m about.”

Routzen defended his alteration of the photos, telling Glamour magazine he shot Renn from a high angle with a wide lens, factors that would make her appear thinner. And he copped to retouching them.

“I shaped her. … I did nothing that I wouldn’t do to anyone,” he said. “I’m paid to make women look beautiful.”

Renn said that as far as she was concerned, she already was.

“I understand a reasonable amount of retouching, if there’s a zit for instance,” she told “Today.” “But to change my body completely, that’s not what I’m about. That’s not my message.”

As if I wasn’t paranoid enough, now I have to find out about all the cancer causing chemicals in makeup. Take a deep breath and read this pile of crap;

To date, the European Union (EU) has banned 1,100 chemicals in cosmetics; the Food and Drug Administration in America has banned only ten. Yeah, I said 10.

Hello America???!! WTF?

One of the best examples is that Cover Girl waterproof mascara contains the same ingredient (petroleum distillates, an oil by-product) as Dr. Scholl’s Wart Remover—both of which are illegal in Europe (oh, so that is why “every lash for volumized  at their boldest, rain or shine” like the commerical says!)

How lovely. But at least we LOOK good right girls?

Many of the chemicals banned in the EU—but found in FDA-approved beauty products—cause cancer, birth defects, genetic mutation, and organ damage. Why is the US regulation system so different from that of our European neighbors?

Read more Fun Facts in the Cosmetics Database!

The EU has been far more critical and demanding of its beauty product manufacturers than the United States, it seems.  EcoSalon reports that even though the 10 chemicals that the US has banned is a good thing, the States can’t prevent other countries from importing harmful products (such as mercury in bleaching creams) – things that would never see the light of day in Europe.  The contrast between the two legislative bodies that cover makeup is truly striking and is making me consider switching to the more expensive European brands. [Links]

I’m already forking over a ton of $ on organic berries for my family (3 times the cost of regular pesticide soaked variety), milk with no hormones or antibotics (in an effort to keep my kids under 7 feet tall, and my daughter from getting her period at 10), not to mention ditching the aluminum laced deodorant that can only be found in health food stores (yet scientists are finding aluminum in the lymph nodes of breast cancer patients).

With that inspiring post,  I am off to the great Northwoods for a nice vacation (while slathered in DEET which will likely cause me to grow a third eye, but what the hell, bring it on).

mV

I remember when I first started blogging, an athlete who was training for the Olympics wrote to me for advice. Here was a girl who had worked her entire life to get to where she was, but she started to realize she didn’t want it anymore. But she couldn’t just –quit, could she?

Her parents would freak.

Her dad would disown her

Who knows what her coach would do.

This was a girl who was being pushed to the limits by all of the above — she had a coach who deprived her of water during training. Parents who watched it happen and supported the extreme lifestyle. They were living vicariously through their daughter, and there, stuck right smack in the middle was a scared, lonely girl suffering alone. I encouraged her to talk, to trust her parents and tell them what she was going through, but she never seemed like she really thought that was an option, it just seemed too scary to her because everyone would be so disappointed in her.

(more…)

I love to find hidden blogs, those focused on body image and eating disorders, they are like little gems just waiting to be discovered. I found Patricia,  the blogger of Beutiful, because she posted on a comment here about her blog. If you enjoy her poem below “Raisins, I highly recommend you go check it out, and sign up for her upcoming newsletter here.

AND, lets do something new,  please post your blog URL so I can find you, I’ll add you to my blogroll, and if you would return that favor that would be great!

XOXO, mV

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Raisins

Yea. I used to look in the mirror. Naked. Hoping. For perfection. Yea. I used to eat raisins all day. I used to want to be everything you wanted and never thought about anything that I wanted. I didn’t know. All I knew was that that mirror had better say “perfect.”

I saw the way you loved models. And celebrities. I saw the media. I saw the fitting room, how my body could not look “right.” To feel guilty for eating, to feel guilty about one pound, to feel anything at all, just to be “perfect.”

(more…)

Original t-shirt on Perez Hilton site

This Jezebel story about Perez Hilton typical of a blogger with no integrity what-so-ever…or so I thought.

Perez was found to be  promoting pro-ana merchandise on his site. But after being called out on it, the shirt didn’t disappear, it was instead revised with the text shown below.

What I find hilarious about this story is how totally lame the revised shirt is, I mean come on, who is going to wear that with such a cheesy phrase. He should have just ditched the thing, or went back to products promoting his own mug. This guy isn’t exactly known for his inspiration.

Sure, it feels great to be healthy, but coming from this dude its like, spare me already.

mV

Revised t-shirt on Perez Hilton site

This is a picture from Bergdorf Goodman‘s website. They depict the 19-year-old model Inna Pilipenko in clothing from Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen’s brand  The Row.

This is sick ok?

Not sexy. Not pretty. Not anything but totally sick.

What kind of fashion director chooses this “body” to sell clothing to women. I mean really, what are they trying to say beyond “Be a sick stick.”

Yeah, yeah, this model doesn’t have an eating disorder, just hold the comment on that because it is irrelevant. The point is she represents 0% of the female population, and at face value is not a good role model for girls. Period.

At least The Olsen’s utilized a strong, vibrant African American model to showcase their clothes on their own web site, and they didn’t go down the pro ana road.

It seems “eating less” is cool these days according to Urban Outfitters. I guess it’s their hip and trendy response to the whole “obesity crisis” but perhaps they should ponder the repercussions of placing this shirt in their stores modeled by a pale skinny chick (that kind of looks stoned).

Irresponsible as hell.

On their web site, this is how they describe the product;

“Eat less or more or however much you’d like in this seriously soft knit tee cut long and topped with a v-neck.” Perhaps they should have printed all of that on there.

Whatever.

Fortunately, as of 9:15pm, the shirt was removed from the site according to HuffPost

And what do you know, 50 minutes ago Urban Outfitters pulled it from the stores.

The wonderful world of the web, such power huh?

- mamaV

Image: Urban Outfitters

Everything is wrong about this story -EVERYTHING (and don’t you dare rip into me about calling this girl anorexic, I don’t even want to hear it, let’s just call a spade a spade already and stop with this PC non-sense).

Ahhh, on to my points;

Healthy Magazine (oh, the irony) has digitally altered a model to appear to weigh more than she actually does. Or as the rest of the articles on this topic are quoting “Skinny Model Airbrushed To Look Fatter”

Irritating. Ridiculous. Just plain wrong.

At the left, you see Polish model Kamilla Wladyka featured on the airbrushed cover to look curvier. On the right, is a bikini shot that, as far as I can tell, appeared inside the magazine (the reason I state this is because all the coverage on this story shows these two images together, in a comparative way, but the odd thing is I don’t see the difference — do you? If anyone has a copy of this UK based magazine, please let me know since I’d like to verify this).

The third picture you see if from the models portfolio, which shows her in what we call a perfect thinspiration pose; hipbones jutting out, collarbone prominent, a stoned look on her face while she leans against the wall to hold her self up.

Pathetic. THIS is what is defined as beauty. No wonder why we are all whacked out over our body image

The magazine claimed that the model had appeared healthy during a casting for the photo shoot a week before it took place, but on the day of the shoot she appeared too thin. Editor Jane Drucker admitted that the model was so thin in real life that she needed to be “radically retouched” before appearing on the cover (where is this radical retouching? So they retouched the cover, but the bikini shot inside was ok? I’m confused). Here’s more from Ms. Drucker;

“Sometimes when you cast a model, they look okay, but then when they turn up on the shoot day they might not have eaten for two or three days. You’re not in charge of their health. When she did arrive, there were plenty of clothes that we couldn’t put on her because her bones stuck out too much. She looked beautiful in the face, but really thin and unwell. She said the magazine was promoting health and wellbeing and therefore the model’s look was at odds with its philosophy. We made her legs a little bit bigger, to make her look like she was a size 10 as opposed to a size 4. It’s not what we normally do and I would never want to mislead people.”

According to the UK’s Daily Telegraph, the magazine added between 15kg to 20kg to the model’s frame (that’s 6-8 pounds). Hold on right there, I’ve heard just about all I can take in one sitting.

The fact that an editor of a magazine, one called “Healthy” for godsake, states casually “sometimes models show up and they haven’t eaten in three days,” is totally demented. But sadly real, I know because I did this. I remember getting this job where I got to go to the South of France for a week, and my booker literally hung up the phone, gave me a high five  for landing it — and then pointed his finger at me and said “Don’t eat all weekend” (So I didn’t, except for about 4 mandarin oranges and a boat load of cigarettes). For the job they had to stuff toilet paper inside my bra since I had no breasts whatsoever (since I had rejected the agencies boob job offer some months prior).

Guys, this is real. Our society thinks nothing of the fact that models are half dead. If you were Ms. Drucker, wouldn’t you feel some sort of responsibility to DO SOMETHING? Like flag the agency, or send her home?? Particularly since their web site claims that they go through great lengths to shoot the perfect cover as told in their Behind The Scenes feature….doesn’t she had some sort of moral or ethical obligation to actually use healthy models?

This one kills me. It makes me feel like all this bitching and moaning I do over this crap is useless.

mV

Trust me, I have many embarrassing images from my modeling days (the worst being when a cokehead “artist” shot an image of me in a black cape, soaking wet, with eyes pitched wide open and evil like some sort a witch kid).

BUT, it wasn’t quite as bad as this, um, fashion statement?

Send your fashion freak images to mamavision@gmail.com

Source: Jezebel