ali to the extreme

May 16

Fri, 05/16/08 — 06:30:00 PM

>> Ali Michael recently went on The Today Show to talk about her struggles with weight as a model, and to promote an article on the same subject in the June/July 2008 issue of Teen Vogue, "Extreme Measures."

Within the article, she delves into more explicit detail about her eating habits — during last September's show season, she was eating "oatmeal with water for breakfast, a banana and a few grapes for lunch, and plain lettuce for dinner, maybe with piece of fish."

She lost her period, and "there was concern [her] ovaries had shut down." Her laxative use caused her digestive system to no longer function as it should, and now she has to take medication indefinitely. Even when she starting going to a nutritionist to improve her health, she was throwing up after meals in secret.

Finally, Ali "cracked" in January because the client who flew her in for a couture show canceled, saying she didn't have a "couture body." She focused on getting healthier and "put on a few pounds," but clients casting the February Paris shows told her she had "fat legs" and "huge ankles." She walked only one show — Yohji Yamamoto.

She says the Wall Street Journal article detailing her February show experience was a shock — she "never planned to go public." Surprising, since she is quoted in the WSJ article as saying of the Yamamoto show: "This show is special." But regardless, it will be interesting to see what happens with Ali and how the industry reacts, especially because she was so highly buzzed about before deciding to speak out.

*image: source

0 Comments Email Link to tags:Ali Michael

posted by Caroline

Wed, 12/31/1969 - 4:00pm

I completely agree with the previous commenter on the hypocrisy of running Ali's story alongside spread after spread of rail-thin models sporting couture trends.Teen Vogue likes to pay lip service to teen health and wellbeing; nearly every single issue has an article about drugs or alcohol or eating healthfully or eating disorders. And yet every single issue has only skinny girls modeling the clothes. How is this responsible journalism?

posted by Elle

Wed, 12/31/1969 - 4:00pm

I find this appauling! Especially as there are much curvier models. I can't believe that people could be so cruel as to send her home !

posted by fleurs

Wed, 12/31/1969 - 4:00pm

While I am glad that Teen Vogue is trying to address this issue, it's incredibly difficult to take the magazine seriously when it is running stories such as "Extreme Measures" while simultaneously featuring in their editorials exclusively rail-thin models from issue to issue. I've suffered from body dysmorphia as a teen, and while it is true that most -- if not all -- of the magazines that I regularly pored over featured very thin women and effectively contributed to (although it certainly did not cause) the sense of inadequacy I felt towards my body and myself, Teen Vogue was, in my eyes, the worst culprit -- if only for the fact that I knew that the girls in the magazine were my age, that they were my contemporaries. I had no excuse not to look like them. While I understand that Teen Vogue is much more of a fashion magazine than it ever was a teen magazine, the very fact that it targets teenagers entails a certain responsibility. The magazine holds a lavish reverence for trends and its pages are filled with beautiful, beautiful pictures of beautiful (and very thin) people; the fact, though, that these images dominate the magazine and often supersede the little focus that Teen Vogue dedicates to the accomplishments of young women as well as to issues that aren't style-related, works very much to propagate the idea that a young woman's worth is primarily based on her looks and her ability to cultivate a "personal style."Given the weight that Teen Vogue holds for setting trends amongst the younger set, it is disappointing that it seems unable to practice what it preaches (I am basing these sentiments on the fact that body image has been addressed multiple times in recent issues, but that there has been no change in the magazine's choice of models -- if anything, the girls have gotten thinner, and their bodies more uniform).