Where, oh where, to begin.

The Association of Model Agencies has hired the PR firm Glasshouse Partnership to provide "reputation management services" and to "position the AMA as responsible" during London Fashion Week.

To my mind, this is a bit like the porn industry "going green:" an industry whose very basis is unethical decides that it will start using energy-efficient light bulbs and recycled toilet paper and the world is supposed to applaud them.

I don't think the "very basis" of fashion modeling is unethical: attractive people acting as human clothes hangers is neither good nor bad in the abstract. But many, many aspects of the industry in its current form are unethical, of which the "size 0" phenomenon is the latest iteration. This is an industry that takes prepubescent girls and basically requires them to postpone puberty indefinitely in order to work. The second a girl develops breasts or, God forbid, hips, she's finished.

The AMA's new PR assault includes a website where parents and girls considering modeling can go to find out: "how to choose a reputable agent and how to stay healthy." This is the best part, though: "Yasmin le Bon was interviewed for the site on what it is like to be a model and how to make the right decisions in the industry."

If the AMA really wanted to give girls an idea of what it's like to be a model, they would have interviewed actual sixteen-year-olds working the catwalks today, not a former "supermodel" (who worked in the days when models still looked like women) who is married to one of the world's biggest pop stars. They would ask these girls questions like: how many hours' sleep do you get each night? What did you eat for breakfast? When, for that matter, was the last time you ate? How old were you when you lost your virginity? Do you prefer Ecstasy or cocaine? Which one is better for curbing your appetite? How many packs of cigarettes do you smoke per day? What do you plan to do with your life when your career is over, at, say, seventeen? Will you go back to school or stay on the party circuit as a "former model" for the next sixty years?

The modeling industry would argue that the fault for the "size 0" phenomenon lies with designers. They're right, to a certain extent. But the way for the AMA to really improve its "responsible" credentials would be to insist that designers build clothing for women's bodies, not starving coat-hangers, and to refuse to supply the designers with models that are underweight and unhealthy.

UPDATE: I've been to the AMA's website:

http://www.associationofmodelagents.org/

and had a look around, and watched the Yasmin le Bon interview. It's a nice interview; le Bon has always seemed to me to be extremely sensible. As are many models. I'm sure that you have to have a pretty good head on your shoulders to get to the top of the industry. But the current "standards" of thinness for girls just starting out pretty much ensure that they'll never get to have a good head on their shoulders, because you have to EAT properly to be able to THINK properly.

Glasshouse Partnership has created an informative website for an industry that looks like it's trying to clean up its act. If that's what the modeling industry is really doing, then bravo for them. If they're merely trying to look like they're cleaning their act while sticking to stick-figure-business-as-usual, then they should be ashamed. Because then the questions I raised above still stand: an industry that positively encourages distorted body image will reap disordered behavior of every kind, including anorexia, drug use and and other self-loathing, self-destructive behaviors that go hand-in-hand. Exhortations to "stay healthy" notwithstanding.

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