Sick Models

Posted by Lori Henry Nov 24, 2006

Bruna Menegotto, a model with Elite Agency, says that it is common for aspiring models to feel fat and ugly after being rejected from a modeling call.

"[A model] goes to a test, gets a "no" and thinks: oh my God I`m ugly, I have to lose weight, I`m not well, they didn`t want me for the job. But it`s not that, everybody gets a "no" for a job. When [models] are younger they still don`t have that conscience, they aren`t used to it."

An agent from Elite in Rio de Janeiro, Luis Lobo, comments that the ban of underweight models is an emergency measure, but that other things need to be changed.

"It can work at the moment, but what will be the duration of this prohibition, until when will it be effective. We need to change in a certain way the route of these people`s work, of the brands, of the designers, of the models, of the agencies," he said.

But not only agencies and designers are to blame, says designer Silvia Tcherassi, it’s also photographers and advertising campaigns.

"More than designers, I would also include the photographers and advertising campaigns because with only one button, they ‘photoshop’ and change the image of a woman. They erase the cellulite, take away the fat that normally woman may have, take away the skin lines, take away the cellulite, stretch legs in an incredible way simply by moving a button.

“So all the girls are looking at an image of a woman that doesn’t exist, while in the runways we are seeing a woman that exists, a real woman. But the majority of these girls, from what I have seen with my own eyes, have a photo on their refrigerator of an advertising campaign with which they want look like and it ends up that this woman is not real."

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