The New York Times recently noted that Ms. Wintour serves as a roving editor at Conde Nast, not only editing Vogue but overseeing the fate of the half dozen other women’s magazines that Conde Nast publishes.
She is a perfect position to stand up against the relentless, unbending dominanace of the anorexic as an aesthetic ideal. It is clearly valuable as an easy way to make clothing drape and hang elegantly, as it might on a clothes hangar, but it comes at a huge cost, not only to the women who starve themselves for the sake of their fleeting careers as models but to all those other women who internalize a near impossible, estremely unhealthy ideal. It is clearly not a gold standard that persists across cultures and centuries but its grip on the modern fashion industry is long overdue for change.
Despite the confessional books that chronicle its devastating effects on individuals, despite the outcries from parents and feminists, despite the alternative models and standards that can serve fashion well, anorexic models remain the default option of almost every fashion label on the planet. Anna Wintour is one of the few individuals who could actually make a difference. Why doesn’t she just do it? Millions of women, and concerned men as well, could stand behind her.