>> Last night, the CFDA gathered an audience at Milk Studios in Manhattan for a Health Initiative discussion on “The Beauty of Health: Resizing the Sample Size.”  James Scully, the casting director who worked on the likes of Jason Wu's and Stella McCartney's shows last season and Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent's during Tom Ford's reign, laid it out:

Of the 172 girls I saw for casting for fashion week, 75 of those were 16 or under. Everybody is demanding the girls fit into a 33-inch hip. A teenage boy has a 32-inch hip . . . they start too young and suddenly when they’re 17 turning 18 and they grow breasts and hips, they’ll do anything to fit into the size.

Doutzen Kroes, who started in the industry at 18 and was pressured to lose weight, offered her perspective: “I never fit the sample. I probably fit it once, when I was 11." Her solution? “We had what we called an ‘ass meeting’ with my agent. I chose to have a healthy lifestyle and work around that.”

Blame for the current standard was placed on unnamed but influential stylists, but Style.com reports that the audience had difficulty addressing how to break the cycle. David Bonnouvrier of DNA Models, who represents Kroes, was sure of one thing: “Of course you have someone like Doutzen and she is untouchable. But the models won’t talk. There will be retribution sooner or later.”

Scully added: "You know, there are times when I will have to book a Karlie Kloss because she’s exceptional, but what makes me sad is . . . the way these girls are discarded as though they're meat. To me, for Karlie Kloss, what is to say what happened to Gemma Ward, what happened to Hilary Rhoda will not happen to her? We all love her today, but when she grows breasts and she turns 18 are we all going to turn on her?"