Starvation shouldn't be a fashion choice

I remember flipping through fashion magazines disinterestedly as a girl, never realizing the extent to which Photoshop could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

We have all come to expect that photos of models are airbrushed in advertisements and fashion magazines. It's a fact -- one that's all too easy to swallow and throw back up.

Recently, Ralph Lauren fired size-four model Filippa Hamilton, allegedly for being too large. This story is an outrage in itself. She is, by the standards of the World Health Organization, underweight.

What made me want to burst into tears was far worse: A dramatically Photoshopped Ralph Lauren ad that surfaced in Japan after she had been fired.

I know all too well that the modeling and fashion industries love to portray women who struggle with eating disorders or have been digitally altered to dangerously unrealistic standards, and they do it with dramatic glamour.

While I was dying of anorexia during my late teens, I was recruited by modeling agencies three times. One of the times I was hospitalized, a fellow patient climbed on stage at the Mall of America to win a modeling contest while on a day pass, her hospital bracelet flopping off her wrist as she waved to an applauding crowd.

Recently, Self magazine ran a "total body confidence" issue and digitally slenderized singer Kelly Clarkson before putting her on the cover, even though she has said that she's comfortable with herself just the way she is.

Women and girls are watching, and the results aren't pretty. Eighty-one percent of 10-year-old girls are afraid of being fat, and an estimated 10 million women and girls in our country struggle with anorexia and/or bulimia at any given time.

Even women who dare to enter the public eye for reasons other than their appearance are targeted by image-related haranguing and objectification by so-called news commentators, such as when Rush Limbaugh suggested that now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shouldn't be president because the public couldn't handle watching a woman age.

If models and even female presidential candidates can't get a break, how can the rest of us hope to have a healthy self-image? When I recovered from my own life-or-death struggle with anorexia, I made two promises that changed my life:

I vowed to speak openly and without shame about what I had gone through. I quickly learned that encouraging others to do the same helps break the isolation in which so many women struggle with our own self-image.

I also vowed to fight sexism as hard as I could, because I had come to see my struggle as a personal expression of all the unrealistic expectations and discriminations that society places upon women.

My personal history has played a role in my work with the National Organization for Women, which is conducting a yearlong "Love Your Body" campaign. NOW chapters around the country are celebrating diverse women in creative and, well, beautiful ways. Most important are the individual connections women make with our own bodies when we say: Yes, this body is mine, and I love it.

Speaking of loving my body, I have decided to return some Ralph Lauren towels I bought before Filippa Hamilton was fired. We should all hope that the fashion giant will consider going a step beyond the cursory public relations apologies issued so far.

Women are more than ready to see Ralph Lauren and other advertisers feature the most beautiful women in the world -- real women like the rest of us.

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Erin Matson is from Minneapolis. She is currently serving as a vice president of the National Organization for Women in Washington, D.C.

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