About a year ago, my homegirl Renata and I were sitting on the floor of my bedroom, looking at issues of Jane Magazine (Oh Jane! R.I.P.), when she said, “Look at how fabulous this bitch looks,” and pointed to a thin girl with frizzy hair wearing a purple dress, gray sweater, and giant glasses. I looked, and responded, “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about the same girl,” and showed her my issue, in which the girl had her hair slicked back and was wearing a black sheath. Renata examined the two pictures for a minute, and then said, “I’m pretty sure all you have to do to look fashionable is be really skinny.”

Since that day I’ve noticed that, more often than not, Renata is right - it’s easier to look chic if you’re slender. There are examples of this all over Hollywood. Consider Exhibit A, Hilary Duff. Back in the day, H. Duffs was a cute kid who certainly wasn’t fat, but definitely didn’t have that sleek boney look that we associate with Hollywood starlets. She was filled-out, normal-looking. Then one day she dropped about fifteen pounds, and all of a sudden she looked…glamorous. Elegant. Less like a kid and more like a chic fashionista woman. And while gossip magazines and news reports condemned her for looking sickly and setting a bad example for girls, she was still appearing on the cover of high-fashion magazines and being featured in designer ads like never before.

Because skinny = style.

We can attribute this national mentality to the media: for years, models and stars have gotten thinner and thinner until they’ve reached the point where many of them are barely more than skeletons wearing skin-suits. The image of ultimate high fashion that we’re presented with is that of the mutant waif, forty pounds thinner than an average person of the same height, gliding around A-list events like an apparition wearing Proenza Schouler. But why? What made the Fashion Powers That Be decide that scrawny is synonymous with chic? Read More »