It’s too little too late Kate, your ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ catchphrase was dangerous
IN the twilight of her dwindling modelling career, drug and booze free (yes, really) Kate Moss has had a realisation.
Deciding to – shock, horror – actually speak in public, the previously publicly mute supermodel now admits her catchphrase that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” is chronically out of date.
In a damage limitation US TV interview, Kate admits the “jingle” was used to keep her and a fellow female model who she lived with from dipping their hands in the biscuit tin.
But now she says of the industry's long slow move away from starvation mode models: “There's so much more diversity now, I think it's right. There's so many different sizes and colours and heights.
“Why would you just be a one-size model and being represented for all of these people?”
I’m sorry Kate, but for me this capitulation in light of growing outrage over your approach to dieting is a case of far too little, way too late.
Your quaint jingle was, in fact, dangerous.
It became a call to arms for desperately unhealthy young models who believed the only way for a career in the industry was to starve themselves. Sometimes literally.
It was used to sum up the fashion industry’s approach to weight, where size zero is lauded and plus-sized is sneered at.
And more alarmingly it has caused years of damage to an entire generation gripped with body confidence issues.
While I’ve, quite clearly, never harboured any desire to be a model or be part of an industry as vacuous and nasty as fashion, my very open battles with my weight is a lifelong and very emotional struggle.
From sometimes bitter and sometimes wonderful personal experience, which has seen me fluctuate over six stone in weight, I am certain that there is no simple explanation to why some people pile on the pounds.
The idea that the love of food is the only connection to being overweight is not only simplistic, it’s deeply damaging.
That said, there’s also nothing worse than the likes of Victoria Beckham or Bella Hadid who try to suggest they love nothing more than a hearty hamburger or large pizza, when the reality of their diets is nothing more than a few lettuce leaves and a prawn or two (if they’re being really good to themselves).
So thank the lord for empowering celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence who tell it like it is when it comes to A-list eating habits.
In stark contrast to Miss Moss, she said this week: “I just like it when everyone's honest. If you are 20 pounds underweight and talk about eating pizza and fried chicken all the time, that's not going to make people feel good about themselves."
Most read in TV & Showbiz
Absolutely. And that’s certainly not me endorsing morbidly obese US model TESS HOLLIDAY who Cosmopolitan controversially put on their cover this month.
In the same way I find it appalling that models like Moss and Alexa Chung have carved an entire career out of being underweight, as J-Law puts it, the same thing applies to a model who has found fame simply because she is overweight.
Neither extreme is healthy – and every fashion director at every major fashion brand needs to stop being so irresponsible.
