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| Born: 22 April Where: Netherlands Height: 180 cm Bust: 84 cm Waist: 60 cm Hips: 90 cm |
Noorda backstage at Julien MacDonald in February of last year.Photo: Imaxtree
Dutch model Kim Noorda kept a diary for Vogue's "shape" issue about her struggles with food and body image from January 2009 to January 2010. When
she began, she was, at five-feet-ten-inches tall, 110 pounds. Under the charge of Vogue's Sally Singer, Noorda goes to a clinic to receive treatment for
disordered eating. She wrote last January:
The intake meeting with the nutritionist [at Renfrew] took place today. She weighed me, calculated my BMI, and made a weight-gaining plan for the four
weeks: one pound per week. This is standard procedure for the center for everyone who weighs less than 90 percent of ideal body weight. I did not like
that at all. I told her I would try to agree to that because my agents have also told me that they would like me to gain an extra five pounds. She told me
that five pounds is not that much, and probably no one would even see it. I told her that people in the fashion industry see every gram of fat. ...
Now 22, Kim had struggled with her weight for years: She continues to discuss her ed further.
I was fifteen when I started, and by the time I was eighteen I did my first catwalk shows. I struggled to prevent gaining weight, whereas already I was
considered to be a “heavy” model compared with the others. My agent told me I was beautiful as I was, but I had to make sure that I would not gain more.
She encouraged me to lose at least some of my weight. I was ashamed that I had to diet. At home I was thinner than everybody else, but compared with
other models, I was heavier.
Every bit of Kim's journal shows how hard it is to be in an industry, especially as an adolescent, where people criticize your appearance all day every day
because all that matters is what you look like. After spending some time at the clinic, Kim hit the show circuit again:
Not a single person has told me that I have gained weight since the start of the shows. Not during the castings, and not even my European agent has said
anything. Everything fit. This confused me, because I thought people could see every gram. Then again, no one has said that I look good, either, or
commented on my appearance otherwise. When I started looking at pictures from the first show, there were still some things I disliked. My legs and
cheeks have become fatter. I really need to do something about that. Exercises. On the Internet there are no positive reactions to how I looked...
Kim's journal suggests she had a very poor sense of self and seemed to define herself almost entirely by how much she weighed. Yet she longed for a
sense of normalcy and things that come with it, like her period. After she gains more weight, she writes:
I avoid scales and mirrors. Only my jeans make me aware of my weight gain. My skin is getting worse; I don’t have my period (except that one time during
the shows); I don’t fit into nice clothes, don’t sleep well. So what is good about it? I speak about weight with my older sister and the therapist as well.
They both ask me what I think is a healthy weight for me, and why. I say I think 57 kilos (125 pounds) is good and that I had been that for a while, eating
normally, and was not gaining any more. I am hoping to get my period again at this weight, and I do eventually and have ever since. .
Even though she continued with therapy after she left the clinic, she still worried constantly about her weight. In the fall she wrote:
In New York I want to be enthusiastic about the shows, but I can’t seem to: I keep being unsure about my weight. By the end of it I want to go home. Skip
London. But my agents advise me to go there. Then I let go again and just do my best. Milan, surprisingly, is a lot of fun. The shows do not go great, and
people definitely made me feel I was too big, but outside of that I have a really good time. Go to La Scala, joke with the driver. At work I am very sensitive,
and when at Bottega I am offered the choice at seven in the morning to bleach my eyebrows or leave, I just want to go. I am crying: What am I doing?
In her final entry, she writes that she feels more balanced and that, though she's less fixated on her weight, she still thinks about it. Should we be
surprised that her story, in all its harrowing detail, is appearing in Vogue? A magazine that employs so many super-thin models who probably struggle
with the same food and weight issues as Noorda? No. Because it provides Vogue with an opportunity to plug the CFDA Health Initiative. Sally Singer
writes in her intro that Noorda was chosen to receive help from Vogue and the clinic as part of this program, which "was founded in 2007 to combat
anorexia and bulimia in the industry, to provide information and resources to models in the throes of these diseases, and, more generally, to change the
aesthetic on the New York runways from extreme skinniness to a more realistic, fit ideal." Though we saw a bit more flesh on the runways in a handful of
fall 2010 shows, not much has changed since 2007. And even Singer tells Kim that after gaining weight, she shouldn't feel bad about not fitting into the
Balenciaga pants she wore at 110 pounds.
More and Less [Vogue]
The world's top models flew to Brazil last week to walk in São Paolo Fashion Week. And as it came to a close, Paulo Borges, the event's creative director,
said he was alarmed by how emaciated the girls looked. Though many of the models are Brazilian, they are based in the U.S. or Europe most of the year.
The AFP reports:
[T]he perceived new push towards skeletal models was a worry.
"This situation cannot be ignored," Borges said, urging those in the fashion industry to stand up against the new trend.
"We would like to propose a joint effort towards minimizing this issue and preventing the effects of this trend on models, on our industry and on society
itself," he said.
We perceive nothing new about the "push toward skeletal models." Every season the Brazilian event has seemed to employ models that were no meatier
than those who walk regularly in New York, Paris, or Milan — even though three years ago organizers introduced minimum age requirements and
mandated that agencies and designers issue health reports to help create "a positive message" about modeling. Maybe regulating model age and
passing out pamphlets about health don't have any effect on the image the industry has of the ideal girl. Certainly when our CFDA set up a booth in the
tents to provide information about eating disorders, no one went! And we gasp at every show when the models come out because it's impossible to get
used to looking at so many girls who are this shockingly thin. We hope for change, but the industry has never made a compelling enough effort to have
us believe in it.
Dutch model Kim Noorda kept a diary for Vogue's "shape" issue about her struggles with food and body image from January 2009 to January 2010. When
she began, she was, at five-feet-ten-inches tall, 110 pounds. Under the charge of Vogue's Sally Singer, Noorda goes to a clinic to receive treatment for
disordered eating. She wrote last January:
The intake meeting with the nutritionist [at Renfrew] took place today. She weighed me, calculated my BMI, and made a weight-gaining plan for the four
weeks: one pound per week. This is standard procedure for the center for everyone who weighs less than 90 percent of ideal body weight. I did not like
that at all. I told her I would try to agree to that because my agents have also told me that they would like me to gain an extra five pounds. She told me
that five pounds is not that much, and probably no one would even see it. I told her that people in the fashion industry see every gram of fat. ...
Now 22, Kim had struggled with her weight for years: She continues to discuss her ed further.
I was fifteen when I started, and by the time I was eighteen I did my first catwalk shows. I struggled to prevent gaining weight, whereas already I was
considered to be a “heavy” model compared with the others. My agent told me I was beautiful as I was, but I had to make sure that I would not gain more.
She encouraged me to lose at least some of my weight. I was ashamed that I had to diet. At home I was thinner than everybody else, but compared with
other models, I was heavier.
Every bit of Kim's journal shows how hard it is to be in an industry, especially as an adolescent, where people criticize your appearance all day every day
because all that matters is what you look like. After spending some time at the clinic, Kim hit the show circuit again:
Not a single person has told me that I have gained weight since the start of the shows. Not during the castings, and not even my European agent has said
anything. Everything fit. This confused me, because I thought people could see every gram. Then again, no one has said that I look good, either, or
commented on my appearance otherwise. When I started looking at pictures from the first show, there were still some things I disliked. My legs and
cheeks have become fatter. I really need to do something about that. Exercises. On the Internet there are no positive reactions to how I looked...
Kim's journal suggests she had a very poor sense of self and seemed to define herself almost entirely by how much she weighed. Yet she longed for a
sense of normalcy and things that come with it, like her period. After she gains more weight, she writes:
I avoid scales and mirrors. Only my jeans make me aware of my weight gain. My skin is getting worse; I don’t have my period (except that one time during
the shows); I don’t fit into nice clothes, don’t sleep well. So what is good about it? I speak about weight with my older sister and the therapist as well.
They both ask me what I think is a healthy weight for me, and why. I say I think 57 kilos (125 pounds) is good and that I had been that for a while, eating
normally, and was not gaining any more. I am hoping to get my period again at this weight, and I do eventually and have ever since. .
Even though she continued with therapy after she left the clinic, she still worried constantly about her weight. In the fall she wrote:
In New York I want to be enthusiastic about the shows, but I can’t seem to: I keep being unsure about my weight. By the end of it I want to go home. Skip
London. But my agents advise me to go there. Then I let go again and just do my best. Milan, surprisingly, is a lot of fun. The shows do not go great, and
people definitely made me feel I was too big, but outside of that I have a really good time. Go to La Scala, joke with the driver. At work I am very sensitive,
and when at Bottega I am offered the choice at seven in the morning to bleach my eyebrows or leave, I just want to go. I am crying: What am I doing?
In her final entry, she writes that she feels more balanced and that, though she's less fixated on her weight, she still thinks about it. Should we be
surprised that her story, in all its harrowing detail, is appearing in Vogue? A magazine that employs so many super-thin models who probably struggle
with the same food and weight issues as Noorda? No. Because it provides Vogue with an opportunity to plug the CFDA Health Initiative. Sally Singer
writes in her intro that Noorda was chosen to receive help from Vogue and the clinic as part of this program, which "was founded in 2007 to combat
anorexia and bulimia in the industry, to provide information and resources to models in the throes of these diseases, and, more generally, to change the
aesthetic on the New York runways from extreme skinniness to a more realistic, fit ideal." Though we saw a bit more flesh on the runways in a handful of
fall 2010 shows, not much has changed since 2007. And even Singer tells Kim that after gaining weight, she shouldn't feel bad about not fitting into the
Balenciaga pants she wore at 110 pounds.
More and Less [Vogue]
The world's top models flew to Brazil last week to walk in São Paolo Fashion Week. And as it came to a close, Paulo Borges, the event's creative director,
said he was alarmed by how emaciated the girls looked. Though many of the models are Brazilian, they are based in the U.S. or Europe most of the year.
The AFP reports:
[T]he perceived new push towards skeletal models was a worry.
"This situation cannot be ignored," Borges said, urging those in the fashion industry to stand up against the new trend.
"We would like to propose a joint effort towards minimizing this issue and preventing the effects of this trend on models, on our industry and on society
itself," he said.
We perceive nothing new about the "push toward skeletal models." Every season the Brazilian event has seemed to employ models that were no meatier
than those who walk regularly in New York, Paris, or Milan — even though three years ago organizers introduced minimum age requirements and
mandated that agencies and designers issue health reports to help create "a positive message" about modeling. Maybe regulating model age and
passing out pamphlets about health don't have any effect on the image the industry has of the ideal girl. Certainly when our CFDA set up a booth in the
tents to provide information about eating disorders, no one went! And we gasp at every show when the models come out because it's impossible to get
used to looking at so many girls who are this shockingly thin. We hope for change, but the industry has never made a compelling enough effort to have
us believe in it.
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