Does Ralph Lauren have a fetish?

Like most people in the world I tend to find models too thin. Does that make them bad people? No. But it does make me wonder why they are so popular.

This all came up because of the actions of Ralph Lauren. In his quest to display his clothing on models that (after airbrushing) could moonlight as pipecleaners, he pissed off Boing Boing (a blog) and garnered far more negative publicity than he could have imagined. But a female friend of mine specualted why all men are so enraptured by women of few dimensions.

Honestly, I am aware of no one that likes a woman so bony a dog would pass them up. It's something that has completely bewildered me. For decades I have seen fashion models and been unimpressed. Of all my friends from high school and college, I cannot think of 1 that considered the weight of a model as attractive. Even the lesbian women I know think that feminine curves look far better than the sickly look of near-anorexia. And as for my models, they all are just natural women.

So where does the pressure come from? Why must the fashion industry near-exclusively use women of a size sub-zero?

I have to believe that the designers are the biggest group of fetishists in plain public sight. That's the only explaination. The women they use, or airbrush, are so far from the norm that Janeane Garafalow (her politics) is mainstream in comparison. Obviously they just saw one Popeye cartoon too many. Especially Ralph Lauren.

When you think about it, only a group of people obsessed with a singular fetish could gather together to make the most unwomanly women objects of desire. They are not the women that get married every day, they are not the moms that raised us all. They aren't even the women that a normal man looks forward to seeing in Playboy.

Why is this important? Well some so desire to be accepted that they will do anything to fit what they see as the ideal of society. And that means becoming anorexic or bulemic. Neither is a state that is worth the false impression of beauty.

The same thing applies to those that airbrush out the "baby bumps" or actresses and models, or lightens the skin of women of color - like L'Oreal did to Beyonce. As Jo Swinson said

"Today's unrealistic idea of what is beautiful means that young girls are under more pressure now than they were even five years ago...The focus on women's appearance has got out of hand - no one really has perfect skin, perfect hair and a perfect figure, but women and young girls increasingly feel that nothing less than thin and perfect will do."

I don't care if Lauren has a fetish about pipecleaners. I don't care that he wants to make a living while celebrating his appraent fetish. But I do care when anyone is put into a place where they feel that they have to behave unnaturally to match the fetish in someone else brain.

Let me be clear, looking like a model - especially in a magazine - is not beauty. No woman should ever be compelled to feel like it is. Because any normal man (or woman for that matter) will always prefer reality over someone else's fetish.

And if Ralph lauren doesn't like my opinion, he can piss off.