Did you see this?

Why Did Elle Magazine Pull An Ad Featuring A Skinny Model?

The pose was more than a little disconcerting, with rib cage obvious and legs about the same width as the young girl's ankles. The picture wasn't of a death camp survivor, but an ad for Yves Saint Laurent, one of fashion's premier houses. When The Advertising Standards Authority, a U.K. watchdog for the advertising world, banned the ad from publication, the fashion world was stunned. But they instead should have been stunned that the fashion world has not recognized the worsening trend for unhealthily skinny models. Isn't it time for the United States to follow Europe's lead in striking down the use of these scarecrow models?

Not your average catwalk

Okay, I didn't like the clothes at all and the women have horrendous faces at times, but this is great in that 1) it uses women who aren't pale imitations of plastic manikins, women who have curves yet who move and are active, and 2) definitely this is different from the normal walk and pivot. Thanks to Vanessa Irvin Morris for sharing. What do you all think?



Oh, and as to the faces, as one commenter, penelopeat8pm, said, 'I'm pretty sure that if for the last 60+ years they've been telling you you're not thin enough, white enough or beautiful enough to partake of fashion, you'd have the same face. :)'

Got everything I needed to accomplished today

I did miss the farmer's market, but hey, there's always Tuesday or next Saturday. I got a new serpentine belt and tensioner. They finished about 2:15 and then came and got me a bit after. I got over to my friends' house a little after three. One friend's mom and stepdad came over a little after that and we visited with them, and then we went to pick up what my friend needed, grabbed some food from Captain D's, came back, ate, and then my other friend and I did a fairly small grocery run. We came back and I watched an episode of 'H2O: Just Add Water' with YKWIA, who is watching the 'Mako Mermaids' series and trying to get me caught up with the first show so we can watch that together. He also showed me several fashion show videos in an attempt to understand style. What I got from that is that I think Prada products are quite ugly, judging from what I saw. I did like Dolce and Cabbana, though.

Tomorrow there's housecleaning, working on updating a character of mine from the Cthulhu game, working on something else, and maybe watching a little more of 'H2O: Just Add Water'. I think I'm going to listen to some music and read a little before going to bed. Have a good night.

I tend to forget I have a sociology degree

It was always a companion major, first to biology (I was going to go into oecology, looking at how humans interact with their environment), then to history, where I studied primarily social and women's history. But stuff like this really interests the budding sociologist in me, and the title certainly attracted me....

America's Next Top Sociologist: A daylong photo shoot for Vogue pays only $150, women are like milk cartons, and other insights from the academic study of modeling

There's a long tradition among academics of embedding in an occupation to study it. In the middle of the last century, social psychologist Marie Jahoda worked in an English paper factory to learn about about the lives of factory girls. More recently, sociologist Loïc Wacquant studied boxers by becoming one, while Sudhir Venkatesh spent seven years with a gang in the Chicago projects. One academic worked as a cotton picker, another entered prison as an inmate.

Ashley Mears embedded as a model.

Her book, Pricing Beauty, shows the world of the aspiring model from the inside, where (mostly) women are utterly dispensable unless they have just the right quality, are often in a form of indentured servitude, and chasing a dream that for most never materialises. The more lucrative forms of modeling are eschewed for low-paying jobs that might mean more prestige. It sounds like a fascinating subject, from a sociological standpoint.

Why is this one fashion rule so hard and fast?

If You Must Know: Why We Can't Wear White After Labor Day

The post–Labor Day moratorium on white clothing and accessories has long ranked among etiquette hard-liners' most sacred rules. As punishment for breaking it in the 1994 movie Serial Mom, for instance, Patty Hearst's character was murdered by a punctilious psychopath. But ask your average etiquette expert how that rule came to be, and chances are that even she couldn't explain it. So why aren't we supposed to wear white after Labor Day?

Thanks to Brandon for the link.

PS 09/06/11 It's cold and rainy here today and so I didn't wear my Birkenstocks in to work, since I didn't want them getting wet, but rather my athletic shoes. I always buy black athletic shoes, but someone was giving away a pair of new shoes their grandmother had in her closet and they fit me, so that's what I have. And they're white.

So this morning I'm on the bus, and I look down, and I suddenly freeze, hoping that Kathleen Turner wasn't about to jump out and kill me.

Kudos to them!

Plus-size models buck thin trend in V magazine: ‘Big’ news as avant-garde fashion publication releases February ‘Size’ issue

In actuality the 'Size Issue' of V presents women, both large and small, in a way to encourage people to see beauty regardless of the size of the woman. They even have two covers, one with tiny Dakota Fanning and one with Precious star Gabourey Sidibe, who weighs just a little less than me.

In a world where a size 12 is a plus-sized model, the average woman is a 14, and 41% of women are above that, we need to redefine beauty. Women may have an ideal size when they are their most beautiful, but it shouldn't be dictated to them. A woman who is beautiful at an 18 shouldn't be forced to starve herself till her health is compromised. What's important is one, being healthy, which contrary to popular belief can be possible at a larger size so long as you are also active, and two, recognising beauty for what it is, not merely something physical but the all-around wonder of woman.