Mixed with a cynical disregard for society and the damage being done
.
What am I talking about?
.
The huge industry devoted to making people feel bad about how they look.
.
There is simply too big, noisy and powerful a commercial drive behind making people feel bad.
.
Why?
.
Because of the fortune to be made in making them feel just a little better again.
.
At the base of this industry are the drug companies that are pushing "wonder" cures and diets.
.
Tanning firms and heavily advertised cosmetic surgery specialists.
.
Not to mention all the mainstream cosmetic firms.
.
They all depend on the advertising and fashion firms that are selling an idealised, youth-obsessed beauty cult that is far beyond the reach of most real humans.
.
And they in turn squirt glossy profits into the media spreading the cult.
.
Against all this, what chance does an impressionable, insecure 14-year-old have?
.
Or for that matter an insecure man in his early 20s?
.
For this is not a women-only problem.
.
Though girls are still vastly more likely to suffer from anorexia or to go for cosmetic surgery
.
The growth of male anorexia in recent years is very striking.
.
Endless appeals to the fashion gurus to rethink the models they use have received a cold-hearted brush off.
.
You can wonder just why that would be?
.
The death at 28 just over a year ago of the anorexic French model Isabelle Caro, who had bared herself to shock the fashion industry, ought to have produced a dramatic rethinking.
.
Go and look at the images, if you can bear it, on the web. Isabelle said.
.
It is everything but beauty… I have psoriasis, a pigeon chest, the body of an elderly person.
.
I even look like a young gay male.
.
No further comment then.
.
There have been some advances, notably the ban on digitally altered body images in advertising.
.
But battle has hardly been joined so far, nor have any serious efforts been made to censor or control blatantly offending media ads.
.
How we feel about our bodies, comparing them with waif-children in magazines, the adolescent gamines and beardless urchins of the runways.
.
It is also about our general happiness and self-confidence.
.
So the question is, what can be done?
.
The first thing is the proper, widely cast investigation the committee in London was doing
.
Among witnesses were companies such as L'Oreal, Boots, Unilever and Proctor &Gamble.
.
As well as the publishers and editors of young people's magazines.
.
An earlier hearing brought some electric evidence from Susie Orbach, psychotherapist and author of Fat is a Feminist Issue.
.
This when she confronted Weight Watchers over what is thought to be the most expensive (£15m) advert ever shown in the UK.
.
You can't legislate for what's in people's heads, nor should you try.
.
It would not be good to see a new censorship.
.
But as governments today all try to influence how much people drink.
.
How much exercise people take.
.
And their eating habits.
.
And their smoking.
.
And their recreational drug habits.
.
And their health and safety in increasingly unimaginable detail.
.
Then it can certainly do more to help support people who are being made miserable merely by being ordinarily shaped.
.
It could and should regulate the advertising and the practice of cosmetic surgery more closely.
.
It could insist that commercial dieting plans carry independently monitored evidence of their effectiveness, and not industry produced highly suspect one sided information.
.
Or very often a complete lack of it.
.
This in the same way as we now expect calories and additives to be listed on food labelling.
.
Above all, though, simply by raising the issue and constantly talking about it, politicians and journalists can change the culture, or at least nudge it.
.
This is, after all, how all campaigns start.
.
Perhaps because it provides such lucrative advertising, the mainstream media has been ludicrously slow to ridicule and attack the skinny-model fashion houses and the snake-oil diet sellers.
.
We have been far too polite, and two faced; and as a result we have done our children a terrible disservice.
.
Jackie Ashley
At the base of this industry are the drug companies that are pushing "wonder" cures and diets.
.
Tanning firms and heavily advertised cosmetic surgery specialists.
.
Not to mention all the mainstream cosmetic firms.
.
They all depend on the advertising and fashion firms that are selling an idealised, youth-obsessed beauty cult that is far beyond the reach of most real humans.
.
And they in turn squirt glossy profits into the media spreading the cult.
.
Against all this, what chance does an impressionable, insecure 14-year-old have?
.
Or for that matter an insecure man in his early 20s?
.
For this is not a women-only problem.
.
Though girls are still vastly more likely to suffer from anorexia or to go for cosmetic surgery
.
The growth of male anorexia in recent years is very striking.
.
Endless appeals to the fashion gurus to rethink the models they use have received a cold-hearted brush off.
.
You can wonder just why that would be?
.
The death at 28 just over a year ago of the anorexic French model Isabelle Caro, who had bared herself to shock the fashion industry, ought to have produced a dramatic rethinking.
.
Go and look at the images, if you can bear it, on the web. Isabelle said.
.
It is everything but beauty… I have psoriasis, a pigeon chest, the body of an elderly person.
.
I even look like a young gay male.
.
No further comment then.
.
There have been some advances, notably the ban on digitally altered body images in advertising.
.
But battle has hardly been joined so far, nor have any serious efforts been made to censor or control blatantly offending media ads.
.
How we feel about our bodies, comparing them with waif-children in magazines, the adolescent gamines and beardless urchins of the runways.
.
It is also about our general happiness and self-confidence.
.
So the question is, what can be done?
.
The first thing is the proper, widely cast investigation the committee in London was doing
.
Among witnesses were companies such as L'Oreal, Boots, Unilever and Proctor &Gamble.
.
As well as the publishers and editors of young people's magazines.
.
An earlier hearing brought some electric evidence from Susie Orbach, psychotherapist and author of Fat is a Feminist Issue.
.
This when she confronted Weight Watchers over what is thought to be the most expensive (£15m) advert ever shown in the UK.
.
You can't legislate for what's in people's heads, nor should you try.
.
It would not be good to see a new censorship.
.
But as governments today all try to influence how much people drink.
.
How much exercise people take.
.
And their eating habits.
.
And their smoking.
.
And their recreational drug habits.
.
And their health and safety in increasingly unimaginable detail.
.
Then it can certainly do more to help support people who are being made miserable merely by being ordinarily shaped.
.
It could and should regulate the advertising and the practice of cosmetic surgery more closely.
.
It could insist that commercial dieting plans carry independently monitored evidence of their effectiveness, and not industry produced highly suspect one sided information.
.
Or very often a complete lack of it.
.
This in the same way as we now expect calories and additives to be listed on food labelling.
.
Above all, though, simply by raising the issue and constantly talking about it, politicians and journalists can change the culture, or at least nudge it.
.
This is, after all, how all campaigns start.
.
Perhaps because it provides such lucrative advertising, the mainstream media has been ludicrously slow to ridicule and attack the skinny-model fashion houses and the snake-oil diet sellers.
.
We have been far too polite, and two faced; and as a result we have done our children a terrible disservice.
.
Jackie Ashley
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