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Forget the waiflike models and girls who are photoshopped to within an inch of their real looks – Franca Sozzani believes technology is to blame for encouraging girls to be unhealthily skinny.
The Vogue Italia editor-in-chief has launched a campaign to shut down social networking sites that promote anorexia. She took to her blog to launch an online petition, and one major target is Facebook.
“For years fashion has been blamed for being the major cause of eating disorders affecting girls all over the world. Today the real culprit seems to be Facebook,” Franca begins.
“Models, as I have underlined before, are in most cases naturally long, lean and slender being still very young and still not fully developed. The image they convey, however, is often that of an excessive thinness, but designers themselves discard those who are visibly suffering from nutritional problems. This is a topic that has been often discussed with false prejudice against fashion when nobody was left to blame.”
So who is to blame?
Sozanni quotes a study carried out by a university in Israel, which found that the more time teen girls spent on social networking sites, the more likely they were to develop negative body images. These could sometimes be fatal.
Sozzani wrote on her blog... "On learning that Facebook is considered today the culprit of anorexia, and since I believe it is impossible that a social network alone may be held responsible for the spreading of such phenomenon, I did some research and found that there are countless pro-anorexia websites and blogs that not only support the disorder, but also urge young people to be competitive about their 'body shape'."
Franca wants you to sign her petition to get pro-anorexia websites closed down – it's a great idea. But does she think that eating disorders will go away if these sites vanish? And is Sozzani just trying to pass the buck?
The Vogue Italia editor-in-chief has launched a campaign to shut down social networking sites that promote anorexia. She took to her blog to launch an online petition, and one major target is Facebook.
“For years fashion has been blamed for being the major cause of eating disorders affecting girls all over the world. Today the real culprit seems to be Facebook,” Franca begins.
“Models, as I have underlined before, are in most cases naturally long, lean and slender being still very young and still not fully developed. The image they convey, however, is often that of an excessive thinness, but designers themselves discard those who are visibly suffering from nutritional problems. This is a topic that has been often discussed with false prejudice against fashion when nobody was left to blame.”
So who is to blame?
Sozanni quotes a study carried out by a university in Israel, which found that the more time teen girls spent on social networking sites, the more likely they were to develop negative body images. These could sometimes be fatal.
Sozzani wrote on her blog... "On learning that Facebook is considered today the culprit of anorexia, and since I believe it is impossible that a social network alone may be held responsible for the spreading of such phenomenon, I did some research and found that there are countless pro-anorexia websites and blogs that not only support the disorder, but also urge young people to be competitive about their 'body shape'."
Franca wants you to sign her petition to get pro-anorexia websites closed down – it's a great idea. But does she think that eating disorders will go away if these sites vanish? And is Sozzani just trying to pass the buck?
