Changes in Body Image - At the beginning of the Twentieth century women were thought to be beautiful when they were slightly plump. Seemingly overnight, the image of the ideal woman changed completely. Fashion magazines began to show clothes on stick-thin models, such as Twiggy, during the 1960’s who created a new trend called “the waif look”. The term “waif” is commonly used to describe an incredibly thin person, usually a woman. Then the term "waif" had gone global by the 1990s, with heroin chic fashion and models like Kate Moss.
The Luisel Ramos Effect - On August 2, 2006, at 9:15 pm, while participating in a fashion show during Fashion Week, a Uruguayan model called Luisel Ramos died of heart failure caused by anorexia nervosa. Luisel had felt ill after walking on the runway and fainted a number of times on her way back to the dressing room. She died at the age of 22. Luisel had gone several days without eating and was reported to have adopted a diet of lettuce and Diet Coke for three months before her death. At the time of her death she had a body mass index (BMI) of just 14.5. She weighed 44 kg at a height of 1.75 m. In the wake of Luisel's death, Madrid Fashion Week (held in September 2006) set a minimum BMI of 18 for all models. In December that year, Italian fashion designers banned size O (Australian size 4) models from walking down their catwalks. The issue jumped into the limelight when fashion organisers banned models with a BMI of less then 18. That meant a model measuring 170cm tall would have to weigh
at least 52 kilograms. Going by these rules, the British supermodel, Kate Moss, would not be able to take part!