by Claudia Bushee

Created on: May 06, 2008

YES, banning underweight girls from runway shows is a start towards a healthier industry. Currently, bookers (the representatives of fashion companies) encourage models to stay rail thin to snag jobs.

My daughter was a model for two years, from 2005 to 2007. She worked in Chicago, Miami, and Milan, Italy. She is six feet tall and during her time in modeling weighed 105 pounds. When asked, she said she was "naturally thin," which she is, but she isn't naturally starved. She survived on one apple a day for weeks at a time. She overheard girls thin girls being told by bookers, to "tone up and don't eat for four days and then we'll hire you for shows." The girls won't publicly decry this practice because they want to work. Models are in large supply and the ones who are hired are the ones who are either near skeletons, or their auntie is a big shot in the business.

If I sound bitter, I am. I did not want my daughter to model. My mother was a mannequin (the term for a runway model in France) for the House of Rochas in Paris in the 1930s. She was the only American mannequin, modeling primarily furs and swimsuits sometimes together. She bore no love of the industry. She said, "Models are narcissists and nincompoops." But she fell prey to thinking she was unattractive once she got older, saying, "All women should be taken out behind the barn and shot after the age of 50." Her time in modeling had negatively impacted her self-esteem. At a young age, she'd gotten all her kudos from her looks and not her brains.

And, so when my daughter said she wanted to model, I made her run the hurdles for it. I did not assist her in contacting agencies. But she was discovered in a Target while playing with light sabers. An agent from Ford modeling witnessed those long slender legs striking her opponent in the toy aisle, and she was on her circuitous way to Milan. She dropped 20 pounds. Her eyes became giant hollow orbs. There was a jagged bone that protruded from the side of her knee. She was exhausted and had trouble concentrating. She started having seizures, induced from lack of food. Ultimately, the seizures convinced her that modeling was not worth the loss of health. She was 18 when she made that decision.

There is a fascination with anorexic models. Is it the discipline these girls force upon themselves every day - every moment - that we as a society find compelling? Or is it a last vestige of keeping women slight in comparison to men? I don't have an answer. But I know it's wrong to sell a product on the back of a starving young woman. If the producers of runway shows can't set standards for the weights of models, then a government agency should. There are thousands of girls who want to be models, and are being punished for their dreams.

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