> Government v. Private "promotion" of beauty standards

> private fashion types enforce their conceptions of beauty by inviting people

> to their fashion shows and making magazines available for purchase,

> while government enforce their ideas with coercive bans on certain models

No one seems to understand (or report it correctly in the American press). In Europe, fashion is considered culture and cultural endeavors are often subsidized by the government. The ban on models in Madrid isn't for private fashion shows. It is for the city sponsored and funded biannual fashion shows (Pasarela Cibeles). The fact that the government subsidizes the shows explains the regulation. There were some egregious examples of severely ill women in past shows which prompted a huge number of complaints from taxpayers who felt their money was being ill-used.

Well, it's a nice idea, and I'd love to see it, but I'm not holding my breath (standardized sizing for women). Levi's has experimented with a computer generated custom sizing for jeans, that starts with a 3-D body scan, and then computes your "exact" size, but it's expensive and it has never caught on.

The problem is that men's clothing isn't just standard in size -- it's standard everything. Guy's wear mostly the exact same things, decade after decade -- suits, tailored shirts, plain slacks, etc. On the other hand, women's clothing changes constantly in cut, proportion, and even components....remember the yuppie era, when women wore suits with huge shoulder pads? Remember when all jeans were high waisted "mom" jeans? Some years the clothing is tight and fitted, with lots of darts and stretch fabrics -- other years, the stuff is huge, floaty and oversized.

Anyone else old enough to recall the "Annie Hall" and "Flashdance" looks, circa 1978-1984? Well, that was my 20s, and based on what I wore for years I had a seriously dysfunctional idea of what sizes I wore, since everything was HUGE -- I could easily wear a size 6 for a long time.

Manufacturers trying to keep up with this would go stark raving mad. For the last few years, jeans have been cut with low-rise waists and made from cotton-lycra blends that are very stretchy -- the result being I had to go down about two sizes.

So I am just not anticipating any standardized measurements. In addition, women tend to be very vested in whatever dress size they wear or aspire to wear -- it's a sad comment on women's lives that even educated, successful women often identify themselves as "a size 4" or "a size 12", rather than any other element of their lives. And to have to go up a size is devasting, just as the pleasure of getting to go down a size can be ecstatic.

Anyone who thinks there isn't something squirrelly going on with stick-thin teenage models, though, is in denial and ignorant of reality. Only a few years back, runway models wore a size 8, because that was the middle of the size range, which used to be 4-12, and therefore it was the size that samples were manufactured in. Today it would be nearly impossible to find a working model who is bigger than size 2 -- and size 2 simply did not exist 25 years ago. Even more common among models and fashionistas is size 0, and 00 and 000 are even more desirable.

The problem with translating this to ordinary women is once you are much older than your teens, this kind of gauntness makes for very harsh facial features, exaggerating wrinkles, collarbones and neck ropiness. Think about Tom Wolfe's description of "social x-rays", or the way Nancy Reagan always looked like a stick figure with a giant lollipop head.

In a money driven world, we generally get what we demonstrate we will pay for -- I think the Spanish government is taking a brave and compassionate stand for reasonable weight standards, but things really will never change until ordinary women demand advertising and magazines that show normal female bodies, and refuse to buy the ones that show a distorted ideal.

You know, that just doesn't sound right to me.

If anything, athletes should have a higher than expected weight due to muscle mass.

According to the linked blog, Maria Sharapova and Marisa Miller share the same BMI, 16.7.

Here's a pic of Sharapova (I looked for candids to minimize airbrushing)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Maria_Sharapova_2007_Australian_Open_R2.jpg

And a pic of Miller (scroll down for beach shots)

http://www.celebutaint.com/marisa_miller/

Same BMI? Really? Does that strike anyone else as being ridiculous?

I think female athletes feel a lot of pressure to report lower numbers for image reasons. Serena Williams officially weighs 145 at 5'10" a BMI of 21. The woman is solid muscle. There's just no way she weighs that little. There's nothing wrong with being heavier than that. We just don't associate any number over about 130 or so with femininity. That strikes me as being sad.

I thought the new BMI laws were to protect the models, essentially putting limits on their working conditions much like you can't require people to inhale abestoes as a condition of work, you can't require them to have a BMI below a certain level. The social aspects for other young women are simply gravy if they happen.

It's interesting what people need to eat. Kitchengirl requires only about 1200 calories when fairly sendentary, while my estimate for myself (admittedly I don't track it particularly) is about a thousand higher than that. I'm not skinny, but I'm not obese--my BMI bounces around 26-27 depending on the time of the month and time of day. In gardening season when I'm out shovelling and forking and dragging wheelbarrows of compost around I'd guess I add about four hundred to six hundred calories on top of that.

It all depends upon the American brand. There's absolutely NO sizing standards in the States. I own 4's, 6's, 8's and 10's - and they all fit me.

Euro Size 38 = US Size 8? I don't think that's right.

It's a size 10. A US 8 is a European 36

"Size" is one of the craziest things about women's clothing you can imagine. For every woman who would be relieved by a rational system of sizing, there's at least one who might object to it for reasons that have nothing to do with fit and everything to do with emotion.

Once we get done with size, let's talk about women's altering garments for free.