French Model Dies, For What?

Isabelle Caro, a french actress and "model" died Nov. 17 of complications from anorexia. She was age 28. At her death she reportedly weighed around 60 lbs. Also, a Brazilian model died of the same reason at age 21 recently.
Caro wrote a book (published in France in 2008) titled: The Little Girl Who Didn't Want to get Fat

To her credit Caro realized she was way off center and in the last year and a half of her life she agreed to do a publicity campaign for saying "NO To Anorexia". Some photos of her the last year and a half are shocking and disturbing.

What is going on here? Well, let me tell you what I think is going on here? It's generally thought that women are most likely the victims of obsession with beauty. But now a days men frequent salons almost as much as women. What is beauty by the way? We know what non beauty is, I mean few would argue that the Hunchback of Notre Dame was attractive, but for the vast majority of people attractivness is in the eye of the beholder. It shouldn't be based on an invented (by Madison Avenue) "set image". Yet women, it seems, have an obsession with perfection and are told that perfection is what the model represents.

Yet the models today are ghastly thin. I want to believe no woman would look at these models and say, gee I wish I looked like that BUT I know many do. Really look at the ads in magazines and inserts and pay attention to what the "models" look like. They are not attractive. They have a woman's face on the body of an unnaturally tall ten year old. That's weird! Imagine women, a picture of a man with Tom Brady's face on a body of a ten year old boy. Attractive?

It got this way because people are willing to accept the idea that freakishly tall, freakishly thin women represent the ideal but they don't; not anymore than 6 fingers on one hand is perfection or 3 ears would be considered perfection. Women especially are victims of this thinking because women have centuries built up of conditioning that their survival depends on "getting a man" and getting a man means looking as close to perfect as possible.It's true that more and more women today reject that idea but then there is trap number two and that is do you want to have kids, a family? Well, in most cases that means getting a man and I refer you back to the previous point made.

It's a cruel joke because women buy into the concept that if they buy the clothes worn by the model they will approximate the model that wore them. They don't actively think this; it's more on a subconscious level, but it's in there. The answer is NO you won't. It's no more valid that a man buying a sports car and then thinking they have become James Bond. NO...let me say it as clearly as I can.....NO You will look like you in a sports car or nice clothes. That's it! But that should be enough!

I'm not saying working out to be fit or staying trim for your health and self desteem is wrong. We should all do more to be healthy and fit. That is good. What I'm talking about here is when you hate yourself if you aren't like the model in the ad, or stave yourself to look more like the model in the ad. When you cross over to obsession and most of the time aren't happy with yourself ....you are going Caro. (my new word)

We all are accomplices in this obsession for perfection in a way because we place so much attention on attractivness when finding partners. The clothes people wear create an image, a brand. We are attracted to the image, or the brand not the person. Later, often after getting married, you realize the person you are with didn't turn out to be the image they projected. Then disappointment sets in. Next thing you know you are out there looking for another "image" to latch onto.

We have to be careful with this image selling and with buying into crazy ideas like clothes make the person, with starving ourselves to look good. Nothing attractive about starving yourself to death, physically, emotionally or spiritually. Ask Isabell Caro...oh yeah, you can't.