Valerie Bertinelli blasts Gisele Bundchen for skinny model trends
Actress Valerie Bertinelli has blamed Gisele Bundchen and her supermodel pals for modern eating disorder trends – because the leading fashion names are doing nothing to promote a healthy image. The Jenny Craig weightloss spokeswoman insists too many girls and young women are starving themselves to emulate “skinny” catwalk stars, and the models fail to understand that sizes zero and two are not the norm.
Bertinelli tells Ladies Home Journal magazine, “When there were several of those models dying from anorexia and I read that Gisele Bundchen said something about it’s not being the designers’ fault but the parents’ fault, I was like, ‘Well now, wait a minute, Miss Skinny Girl.’ “(I said), ‘Designers do have something to do with this because they hire women like you.’ “There was one designer who was proud of herself because she hired models that were a size four. And when asked why she didn’t hire a (size) six or eight, she said, ‘Because the clothes don’t look good. They don’t hang right.’ “Aren’t you supposed to design clothes that look good on real women?”
WENN
March 5th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Let me see. Doctors advocate keeping a healthy weight. bertinelli enters into a program to lose weight, therefore validating a personal premise for doing this. BUT, it is Gisalle’s fault that she is not overweight and suffering as some are.
BS!
March 5th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
God, this ticks me off. I work for a major modeling agency. You can’t blame the girls. They just do what their bookers/agents tell them – which is driven by what the designers are looking for.
There are a couple reasons for this:
1. Fashion, especially high fashion, is designed to be fantastical; ethereal. It’s not supposed to look like your average day at the mall.
2. Clothes DO look better on thinner frames; deal with the reality.
3. Setting aside women’s innate desires for youth and slimness, which I believe result from evolutionary psychology – most American women are overweight – more than 1/3 of them are grossly overweight. Therefore it’s going to be seen as far more exclusive/desirable to be really skinny. In societies where everyone is skinny and starving, it was seen as exclusive/desirably to be curvy.
4. If you think Gisele is really skinny, you haven’t been following the fashion industry. She’s curvy by high fashion standards. The top models this year – Vlada Roslyakova, Olga Sherer, Snejana Onopka – make Gisele look like a beast.
5. The problem in America is not thinness – it’s fatness. For every few thousand fat people, there might be one underweight person.
Five free clues from me, kids! For free, even.
This free lesson had zero carbs, zero calories, and no fat!
March 5th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
two other things – it’s NOT MEANT TO REPRESENT THE NORM, Valerie. This is the fashion industry, not Wal-Mart.
second, what i meant was that for every few thousand fat people there’s probably one true anorexic.
anyway, it’s BS
March 5th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Go Natasha! Go Natasha! Go Natasha!
March 5th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Um, no Valerie – it is the weak minded that fall for these eating disorders… I am so sick of hearing about this “disease” that vain women have to look like a stick. You were fat, now you are average – get over it, and you don’t need Jenny Craig to eat sensibly and exercise, it is common sense, DUH!! Quit stuffing yourself with fries and exercise 3-4 times a week – it is not that difficult.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Valerie B. has LOST any respect I once HAD for the woman now that she has a TELL-ALL book about what she was REALLY like (doing drugs, etc. etc)! Some things DO not need to be told!
March 5th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
twiggy anyone, kate moss? it wasnt giselle that started the trend and it is not her that is going to stop it!
March 5th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
The thing is, Giselle was blaming parents not the fashion industry. She claimed that having a strong family base would prevent eating disorders. Because of this, I think that in a lot of ways Valerie has a point. To say that eating disorders are not at all caused by the fashion industry, but rather an unstable home life, as Giselle claims, seems pretty inaccurate.
Can Giselle, or anyone else for that matter, honestly say that the fashion industry doesn’t play a part in setting the standard of women’s physical appearance?
I agree with your points Natasha, especially that many of the clothes are really not meant for the average woman– that high fashion looks better on very thin models. However, while the clothing may not make it to the local Wal-Mart, the photos of models, actresses, etc. who represent the labels do.
I think both Valerie and Giselle make excellent points, but you can’t blame JUST models, the industry, or parents. It has to be a combination of everything.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
“2. Clothes DO look better on thinner frames; deal with the reality.” – Natasha
Yes, I agree, clothes that are produced now by the fashion industry do look better if one is skinny.
BUT clothes are what we make of them! The designers have the power to alter that but are they brave enough to do that (or even willing )? I dont’t think so.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:07 am
I THINKS SHE IS ONE UGLY ASS BITCH!! FUCKEN U-G-L-Y!!!
March 6th, 2008 at 6:49 am
Natasha,
Have fun in your delusions…………….(and for the record I am not one of those GROSSLY overweight people) I just don’t think you make any sense whatsoever.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Jo, I 2nd that. I LOL off when reading her comment. So, silly!
Too much America’s next top model, it’s time to put the remote down.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Why can’t clothes be designed to flatter medium-sized frames, rather than stick-thin frames??????
I think both of them (G & V) need to just sit down and be quiet.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I wish people would realize that we all don’t have to look exactly the same or even have the same body build/size. There’s room for skinny and large and everything in between.
The fashion/apparel industry should be designing attractive and wearable clothing for ALL sizes not just favoring ONLY the pencil thin amongst us.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Also, I think people should focus more on eating right whenever possible and DAILY exercising and they should stop obsessing about dress sizes and the numbers on the scale. You can still be fit and appear overweight, even classed as obese…and you can be skinny, look like a model and be unfit and unhealthy because your immune system is lower due to lack of nutrition and exercise. Any doctor can tell you that. All this obsession with size is NOT about health, it’s about looks and using those looks to think one person is better than someone else. It’s pathetic really that we women tear at each other like this. NO ONE puts men under such pressure or judges them based on their looks and weight. So why do we keep doing this to ourselves?
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
“NO ONE puts men under such pressure or judges them based on their looks and weight. So why do we keep doing this to ourselves?”
Because, lets face it, men have all the power and we as women need to get over ourselves!
September 6th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I am so gald that Valerie has said something. Hi, I’m 15 years old and have had anorexia nervodse for two years. I always wanted to look like Gisele. I mean she is very tall and underwieght. To me that always seemed like the ticket to happieness. I was obese as a child and hated myself for it. I have been caleed every fat name in te book. You name it and the 5 year old me was called it. I say 115lb Gisele on tv and told myself I will only be worth anything if I look like that! I now know that that was the eating disorder taking and not me, but I feel worthless whenever I see people like Gisele paradig the super-skinng weight around and getting away with it. If I matched her bmi I would be hospitalized for my eating disorder and yet because she’s over 18, she gets away with it!!!!!!!!!! Why can’t the aduts set good examples fgor once?!
September 4th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
come on, Gisele Bundchen is the biggest supermodel in the world… of course shes going to be thin. When talking about promoting a good image, i think she does it more than any other model becaues though she is thin, she is still of HER healthy weight. Her body is extreamly long and lean…and VERY narrow, naturually. So even at her adverage weight, she looks thinner than anybody else. And the designers choose models size 4 and under because its true, clothes dont look as good as they do on someoen of that size. Why would they want to show their clothes on someone who isnt that thin? When thin people dress clothes look better on them than someone else. And if your thinking…well there not thin their skinny, thats true but not all the time. Liek gisele, there are some that are just naturally very thin…but for the ones that are skinny, its becasue tahts how the designer wants it. The designer isnt saying everyone has to be like that, they just want to make a living and sell their clothes with girls of that size….oh well everyone has to deal with it.
And this is when Gisele’s point comes in. The girls who decide to starve themselves to look like SKINNY models usualy are the ones who dont come from a strong family base. When you have a supportive family who gives you alot of advice, you will think your better than to starve yourself.