Thin model provides food for thought

Beanpole,” “string bean,” and “a carpenter’s dream” (thin as a board) were just a few of the names I answered to when I was a young girl.

“Don’t turn sideways, Renee, we won’t be able to find you,” was another phrase that I heard during my prepubescent and early teen years.

“Don’t worry,” well-meaning grown-ups would say. “You’ll fill out someday.”

They were right, by the way, but it didn’t make me feel much better at the time. It doesn’t make me feel much better now, either, since I’ve filled out in areas I’d just as soon not have.

At 5 feet 9 1/2 inches tall, with long, skinny arms and long, bony legs, a flat chest and a pixie haircut, I was not the belle of the ball at most junior high dances, I can assure you.

I was reminded of those not-so-joyful days of my childhood earlier this week when a reader e-mailed me, drawing my attention to a photo of a young Maine girl who was to be the featured model for a charity fashion show. The photo was in the March 29 BDN on the Lifestyle page.

The reader was upset by the photo of a very skinny Victoria Lee Fuller, who has been on the cover of Nylon magazine and “strutted her stuff in two New York City fashion shows,” according to the accompanying news article.

I wasn’t the only one who got e-mails. Several calls were made to the higher-ups at this newspaper, largely by parents accusing the paper of sending the wrong beauty message to young girls.

I pondered the picture for a few minutes and showed it to my husband, who gave it the once-over, tossed it back and said, “Yep. She’s skinny.”

“You know what, though,” I replied. “Take away the long, lustrous brunette hair, the to-die-for big eyes, the perfectly shaped nose, the full lips and flawless skin and that was me when I was 14 years old.”

Those bony knees, big feet, no hips, no butt nor breasts. I wish I’d known then that those were the benchmarks of real beauty. I also wish someone had told some of those junior high boys who never plucked me from the wall for a slow dance.

I ate everything I could get my hands on during my teens. In another desperate attempt to put weight on me, my mother once ordered weight-gain pills from the back of a magazine. I only remember that they were very big, very green and had to be stored in the fridge. They didn’t work. Then we went through the eggnog stage. She’d mix up a batch of homemade eggnog in the blender, make me lie on the couch for a half an hour, drink the eggnog and go directly to bed.

Through all of those years, however, I was very healthy. I played three sports a year and ate anything I wanted. Yet today the image of the teenage me in a newspaper would probably have spawned a bit of outrage.

Nothing really worked until I went to college and gained the traditional “college 10,” which took me from 115 pounds to 125 pounds. That I was eating in a cafeteria three times a day and not playing sports fall, winter and spring was what finally worked.

Victoria Fuller is a young woman still in high school. I hope that it’s genetics that make her that skinny and not a form of starvation with a modeling goal in mind.

I am raising one girl who is lamenting because her size zero jeans no longer fit her, and another who seems to be doing a decent job at accepting her height-weight ratio yet I know longs to be several sizes smaller.

As parents, we are literally pummeled with warnings that our kids are obese while at the same time warned that talking with kids about weight issues could result in the onset of anorexia.

In some ways the media are changing. The premier world fashion show in Madrid this year blacklisted models deemed too thin. The Dove Co. now features women with a bit of girth as beautiful. The managing editor at this paper fielded a number of phone calls on Victoria Fuller’s picture and his response was that in hindsight he would have looked more closely. It wasn’t in his mainstream of consciousness at the time. Now it is, and that’s not a bad thing.

But are fashion designers always going to want their designs modeled on virtual clothes hangers? Probably. I have one advantage as I’m raising these girls. They seem to believe me when I tell them that bony legs and bony arms are not sexy, and if my grocery budget is any indication the kids in my house are eating just fine.

That so many of you responded to that picture is good. It’s one more sign that we, as a society, are catching on. I have filled out, and like so many other middle-aged moms weight is always an issue, but truthfully I never care to regress to the days of being called “beanpole” or “string bean” again.

Renee Ordway can be contacted at rordway@bangordailynews.net.