Popular Photography
As a way to jolt the fashion industry out of its anorexic mindset, the banning of size-zero models from Madrid's catwalks was just fine in my opinion. I agree with Dave Schonauer's blog that the line should be drawn at a government mandate. But anyone who needs reminding that the female body-image crisis isn't limited to haute couture should check out Thin (Chronicle Books, $35), Lauren Greenfield's powerful new study of patients at a Florida eating disorders clinic.
We'll be covering Thin (not its companion documentary film) in the January/February issue of American Photo, which comes out in mid-December and will be devoted to the best books of the year. In the meantime, I brought Greenfield's book home to show my wife—and she looked at it and said, referring to the woman pictured on the cover, "She's been digitally stretched." The thought hadn't occurred to me, but I had to give it extra credence because my wife has worked with psychiatric patients who have eating disorders.
What do you think? Even the title type treatment on the cover suggests a kind of elongation, so maybe the figure and image were stretched as part of that. On the other hand, as A.P. art director Deborah Mauro points out, anorexic women can truly look distorted. Help me here.
As I said in my blog about the new issue of FP magazine, covers are editorial illustrations anyway, so even if Greenfield has resorted to a little digital manipulation to make an important point it doesn't bother me. Besides, more traditional forms of photographic distortion are used in similar ways to make a point, and we readily accept them. An example is this low-perspective, wide-angle shot from inside Greenfield's book, which stretches out its subject dramatically.
Unfortunately, Thin's cover image doesn't run inside the book, so there's nothing to compare it to.