Starving model dies. As the headline shoots at me on the screen, the words “not again” scurry through my mind.
The hope of better times dies inside while my brain digests the letters in the article and all I really want to do by the end of it is to shut down my laptop, grab my bucket of mocha ice cream and tell myself that I will never have to read anything like that again.
The two of them were sisters in the modeling business. They were young, they were beautiful, and they used to be alive. Eliana Ramos, 18, was recently found dead in her bedroom in Uruguay just months after her younger sister’s death last fall. Eliana died of a heart-attack as a result of starving herself for a long period of time; this is the same reason her sister, Luisel, died.
Models starving themselves to death is nothing new. The sad part, however, is that nothing has been done until now, and still, the industry is torn.
The death of Luisel Ramos led to a debate within the modeling industry, a debate that grew even bigger as Brazilian model Ana Carolina met the same fate in November.
Spain was the first country to then ban models with a Body Mass Index – a measure of a person’s relation between weight and height – lower than 18 from the catwalks.
Brazil and Argentina also began to set up a similar policy and the Italian government, together with chiefs in the industry, recently presented a manifest that will require models to have their status confirmed by a doctor before they can step out on the runway.
This is good news and a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, criticism is still directed towards Britain and United States for avoiding the issue and for not setting up clear rules.
I find it frightening how the biggest interest doesn’t always lie in the health of the models, and how even though some finally realize the problem, not everyone cares.
The reason why all this gets me so upset is because I know how miserable life can be when you are underweight. I have experienced the feeling of your body starting to demolish.
The optimal value of your BMI lies between 19 and 25 – lower than 19 being underweight – and in one time in my life not too long ago, I was down to 15.
Life isn’t better being thin. Beauty doesn’t come as the pounds shed off. In fact, your life just becomes more and more meaningless as your body progressively shuts down and you definitely don’t look good.
To me, the solution of a minimum BMI-value is a good way to regulate the business because it is an undeniable measure of when your body works, and when it doesn’t.
My hope is that the rest of the world, and especially the United States, will soon think so too.