Study says using plus-size fashion models could make women fat

a new study insists that promoting images of heavy models is actually worse for women's health in the long run.

The research predict that using overweight models may result in encouraging women to become fat by influencing them to think that it is normal and healthy to be overweight.

Dr. Davide Dragone and Dr. Luca Savorelli of the University of Bolognia in Italy mention this in their paper Thinness and Obesity: A Model of Food Consumption, Health Concerns, and Social Pressure, 

"To promote chubby fashion models when obesity is one of the major problems of industrialized countries seems to be a paradox.

Everyone has to trade off in life a number of things like the pleasure of eating and going to the gym as a cost, so if you just fix the average healthy weight, then maybe you will throw up some incentives to be thin."

The research claims that countries where the fashion industry is more accepting of plus-size models (like the U.S.) have heavier populations.

..the fashion industry is a powerful trend-setter that influences society's behavior and standards of beauty, so the increased use of heavy models may desensitize people to the reality that being overweight is bad for one's health.

The researchers specifically took issue with a 2006 agreement between the fashion industry and Italy, Spain and Germany to require a higher minimum size for models and to increase the production of larger sizes for fashion labels.

"When reading the content of the agreements, it is clear that both the government and the fashion industry agree that fashion is a powerful trend-setter. It not only influences what clothes, styles and colors are trendy, but also determines how a person should appear to be desirable.

If being overweight is the average condition and the ideal body weight is thin, increasing the ideal body weight may increase welfare by reducing social pressure. By contrast, health is on average reduced, since people depart even further from their healthy weight.

Given that in the US and in Europe people are on average overweight, we conclude that these policies, even when are welfare-improving, may foster the obesity epidemic."

Basically, the researchers claim that promoting a healthy-weight ideal benefits society as a whole because seeing skinny models may influence people to watch their weight, and this will result in lower overall healthcare costs.

In 2008, the medical costs of treating obesity-related diseases in the United States totaled some $147 billion.

Source:

Chang, S. (2011) Study says using plus-size fashion models could make women fat. Retrieved on 14 December 2012 from http://www.examiner.com/article/study-says-using-plus-size-fashion-models-could-make-women-fat

Personal opinion: This article can be a support statement for the bad impact of using plus size models. This is based on the fact that, in this articles it mentioned that fashion is a powerful trend-setter. It not only influences what clothes, styles and colors are trendy but also determined how a person should appear to be desirable. Therefore,  by publishing many images of plus size models will indirectly leading the people especially women to be fat or continue to be fat because it is a common thing.