Women and Fashion
by So Yin Lam (4C)

The fashion industry has always presented a negative image of young women. Glamorous looking models with sexy outfits and catwalking on the stage are images that have been imprinted on people's minds of what young women should look like and go after. The pursuit of good looks over inward qualities is the side effect of these dazzling figures. What’s more, pictures of starved or malnourished models that look like skeletons can be found in every fashion magazine.

The industry hires young girls to be models and those girls have to be extremely tall and thin. Anyone who is not skinny enough is not good enough. These models must keep their body slender to stay in the fashion business. Constant dieting has become the norm and it is hard to be rectified. Gaining weight is their worst nightmare. Such behavior sends out a negative message and that is, they should only eat enough to survive. Girls who are too heavy may become others' laughing stocks. Those who care too much about what people think may be depressed and start dieting. This, therefore, creates a vicious cycle. Being obese is bad, but being too thin may cause more damage to our physical and mental health. However, the fashion industry has already decided on what a girl should look like.

Moreover, the pace of fashion is so fast that the trend changes every season. Some girls follow the trends blindly in fear that they are lagging behind. Boutiques need to attract young girls, so those who want to catch up with the trend will buy a lot. They don't want to become an outsider among other girls. If they do not have enough money to buy the clothes or accessories they want, they may resort to borrowing money from the bank or swiping their credit cards excessively. The way they spend their income is lopsided with the money they use on clothing. Some girls may lose control to the point where they stock up clothes and pile up loans at the same time. They may be wasting money on something that is totally unnecessary. This makes people think that girls are materialistic and impulsive buyers.

As part of their professional practice, models cannot refuse to put on sexy clothing. The fashion industry has used these sexy images of young women to draw people’s attention. They not only set the standard of what beauty is, they also tell other women that it is okay to even pose nude if the designer asks for it. People who are not in the field may not understand and feel that these young women are too open in the way they expose their body. This phenomenon also adversely affects young women's sets of values.

All these attribute to the negative image of young women in the fashion industry. They distort females’ image by conveying the concept that women have to be thin and sexy. They encourage women to go on shopping sprees for the never-ending change in fashions with huge unpaid credit card balances. Quite sadly the fashion industry has successfully kept the myth that girls should be slim to be pretty and the sexier they are, the more attractive they are. Many young women are too naïve to realize the trap they are about to fall into and too weak to say no.