Sociologists and nutritionnists worry about the dictatorship of the thinness (LeMonde, 21.11.03)

After the physical constraints imposed to the women during centuries, the fashion locks up them in an increasingly heavy immaterial yoke. The scientists consider the physical consequences and morals of the esthetics of the thinness.
Anthropologists of the food and nutritionnists note more and more the misdeeds of the model of thinness, even of thinness, preached by the aesthetic guns of the current mode on part of the female population. To resemble the models longilignes presented in the female magazines, and which become an ideal to be reproduced, many young women, teenagers, even of the small girls, deprives itself of food.
 

What can in the long term involve health hazards their: early osteoporoses, problems of fruitfulness and pregnancy. This behavior is all the more astonishing as it intervenes in a company where reign a food situation of safety, even of plethora in this field.

This paradox and its worrying drifts led Annie Hubert, anthropologist of the food and director of research at CNRS (laboratory adaptability biological and cultural in Bordeaux, the Gironde), and the Cidil Observatory of the food practices (OCHA) to organize a conference, November 4, with the Palate of the discovery, on the topic "Body of women under influence - to question the standards". The OCHA, created in 1992 by Cidil (and documentation Information center of the milk industry) and equipped with a scientific committee, has as a function to study the complex relation which is established with respect to the food.

Which social processes supported the installation of "thin, thin, the clipping on the body and its diaphanous side in the medium of the plethora?" , questions Annie Hubert. She recalls that the female body is, for a long time, the object of aesthetic constraints.

Feet bandaged of Chinese of high society - a habit which lasted five centuries -, the lips of African women deformed by wood plates, the elongation of the neck by collars at Karens of Asia of South-east, the fattening of the young women before the marriage in the island of Djerba provide some examples of them. Europe was not in remainder, with the corsets and the sizes of wasp, then the high heels and the tight shoes which deform the foot. The anthropologist notes that "they are mainly the bodies of women who are subjected to these constraints, the practices of deformation being rare at the men" .

DESIRE Of SOCIAL EFFECTIVENESS

In Occident, the release of the female bodies came from the Anglo-Saxon world. In the United States and in England, often related movements with incipient feminism threw to the nettles all the implements of the corset. The women can finally breathe normally, to have a waist measurement higher than 50 cm and to remain beautiful even after the disappearance of the sheath, in the years 1950. This release appeared of short duration, because the mechanical constraint was replaced gradually by an interiorized constraint which preaches the thinness by banishing the fat. "the representation of the female body gradually changed to become that of a very thin body, even �th�r�, young and powerful, released of any material yoke. This last was replaced by a yoke moral and immaterial increasingly heavy ", Mrs. Hubert adds.

Jean-Pierre Corbel, professor of sociology of the food at the university of Turns, explains that this evolution occurred since the end of the last world war. With leaving this conflict, where the French knew the deprivations, the true fear was that to miss food. Also, in the years 1950, the French "reach" food merrily, and the beefsteak fried is with the honor. As tuberculosis is still feared, a thin body is then regarded as a sick body. It is the time when the actresses have pulpy bodies, such Martine Carol or the stars Italian.

Then, gradually, as from the years 1960-1970, the fear of missing disappears from the French landscape and one enters a logic of slimming encouraged by the fight against the cardiovascular diseases and some "lipophobie". The meat consumption starts to be criticized by the medical profession and the nutritionnists and one passes from beefsteak fried to the steak French beans with an orientation increasingly marked towards vegetable foods. This tendency goes hand in hand with the desire of social effectiveness of a population which urbanizes: it is necessary to go quickly, to be powerful, and to get rid of an overweight synonymous with inertia.

Then, gradually, one passes from the thinness to the thinness, undoubtedly for "d�sexualiser", and to disavow animal dimension from the point of view of purity. "the esthetics of lightness, of the thinness of the female body becomes that of obliteration, of the not-visibility of a sex object increasingly diaphanous and transparent" , M adds. Corbel. This tendency is perfectly apparent at the time of the annual presentation of the collections of seam. "These processions became a true circus , is indignant Annie Hubert. The mannequins are not any more of the people, but statues manufactured."

 

"SPEECH MORALIZER"
This orientation towards the thinness is of course maintained by the fashion magazines for aesthetic reasons, by certain chains of television, and is relayed by part of the medical profession, because of the alarming increase in obesity. But, "between the preventive concern and the risks of the search of the theoretical ideal weight, the medical speech is on the wire of the razor" , explains for its part Arnaud Basdevant, person in charge for the service nutrition of the Hospital in Paris, specialized in the treatment of obesity. "This speech feeds the social pressure around the thinness and impregnates itself some. From where an accusing projection with respect to large. It is the return of a speech hygienist and moralizer " who is not without risks.

More and more of voice rise to criticize the " terrorism of the thinness ". Certain female magazines themselves try to react. The "one" of the weekly magazine It showing the forms of Emmanuelle B�art made it possible the review to carry out one of its best sales. And the fact that the conference "Body of women under influence" was organized is, for Annie Hubert, the sign which " the ice-barrier is fissuring " and which the things are perhaps changing.
 

The line seen through the look of the mannequins
Into a little more than twenty years, the "look" of the mannequins which do the "ones" of Official, Marie Claire, Biba, 20 years, Vital, Vogue and It singularly changed. From now on, it is necessary thinner, even thinner, more and more to be stripped and equipped in a moulding way. It is only to divide into sheets these reviews to be convinced some. It is what did, between 1980 and 2003, Annie Lacuisse-Chub, endocrinologist, diabetologist and nutritionnist with the Faculty of Medicine Pity-Salp�tri�re (Paris). From its study, it comes out that the thin-thin-stripped model passed from 5,6 % to 25 % in Marie Claire, from 15 % to 87,2 % in 20 years and from 26,8 to 86 % in Vital. This report is accompanied by another, underlines Annie Lacuisse-Chub, relating to the increase increasing in the incentives to make modes in a number of magazines which invite the lectrices thus to follow the guns of a fashion dictated by themselves.

ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN the EDITION OF The 22.11.03.