Even a partial list of body image problems that a child may run up against can be petrifying—anorexia nervosa, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, severe calorie restriction, low self-esteem, self-harm. High fashion and Hollywood aren’t entirely to blame for the prevalence of these problems—that would be a tough case to argue—but they certainly haven’t helped. Lindsay Lohan’s prison entry information is a good example of a bad example.
According to psychologist Irene Rubaum-Keller of the Huffington Post, Lohan’s physique is influential, and her booking sheet proves she is still too thin, showing her weight as 118 lb. She’s been thinner, too.
Think this sort of thing makes little impression on impressionable youth? Google “thinspiration” or “thinspo,” and buckle up. You’ll see some familiar figures, no doubt, many from the big screen and more on the catwalk. Public figures have been influencing the American figure since Wallis Simpson (or possibly Coco Chanel) said, “You can never be too thin or too rich,” if not before then.
You can be too thin. Among eating disorders—among all mental disorders, in fact—anorexia is the deadliest, killing an estimated one-fifth of the 1 in 111.1 women and 1 in 333.3 men who have ever been diagnosed with it. Bulimia is similarly common: 1 in 66.67 women and 1 in 200 men have ever been diagnosed with the disorder.
It’s clear that the pressure on young women to be thin and “healthy” is enormous. (It is on men, too, but few would argue that the standard of beauty for American males hinges on weight as completely as it does for American women.) And it’s grown. As an illustration, here are the body mass indices of a handful of female sex symbols and starlets organized into a timeline.
It does not depict a straight descent into starvation, nor is it a complete list of anything. Consider it a diagram of a trend.
October 1933: TIME magazine praises Mae West’s full figure in I’m No Angel, although it praises nothing else about the movie. According to the magazine, she developed her curves doing acrobatic vaudeville and “likes diamonds, rare beefsteaks, and racehorses.” It goes on to add, cheekily, that “the Central Association of Obstetricians & Gynecologists congratulated Mae West for popularizing plump female figures, called her style ‘a boon to motherhood.’” The reader is even treated to her dimensions: “height 5 ft. 5 in., weight 120 lb., waist 26 in., hips 36 in., bust 36 in.” She has a body mass index (BMI) of 20—in the normal range, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
1946: A young Netherlander named Audrey Hepburn-Ruston diets down from 150 lb. (which, after the privations of war, she attained by “eating everything in sight” as compensation) to 110 lb. in order to study ballet in London. There, her teacher assures her that this weight, coupled with her height (5 ft. 7 in., relatively tall in her estimation) would actually prevent her from becoming a prima ballerina. She decides to pursue acting, as Audrey Hepburn. Her BMI is 17.2, considered underweight.
December 1953: Marilyn Monroe appears on the cover and as the centerfold of the first issue of Playboy magazine. Her three-page write-up begins with her measurements; even then, the dispute over them raged. They “have been reported as 35″ 24″ 37″, 37 ½″ 25″ 37 ½″ and 37 ½″ 23″ 37″. Sometimes she’s 5′ 4″ tall and weighs 120 pounds, but she may shift unexpectedly to 5′ 5 ½″ and weigh in at 118.” Her BMI is thus either 20.6 or 19.3, both considered normal today. Even during a late-life depression, when her weight was a supposed 140 lb., she was still in the normal range. According to Playboy, Monroe is “the juiciest morsel to come out of the California hills since the discovery of the navel orange.”
