Ethel used to have a normal waist line until she met her husband, William.  Obsessed with wasp-waisted women, William convinced Ethel to start wearing corsets.  She was fine with her slim 24″ waist, but William kept convincing her to keep going.  What started with just wearing a corset during the day, ended up into wearing one every hour of every day.  Her waist is now is a tiny 13″.  Her husband called it “fashionable” but Vogue Italia, who used Ethel as a past cover model, just thinks it’s sexually perverse.  What do you guys think, chic or scary?

It’s certainly not news to anyone that models found stomping their pumps on the runway have been getting increasingly more frail. Though people love to point fingers in various directions, for speculations of the cause, it really would be nearly impossible to blame any one source. All in all, it’s an epidemic that has been getting completely beyond a well-grasped control. Of course there were the runway shows in Madrid, which banned super-skinny models from getting their time in the limelight for all to observe their near skeletal figures, but did catalogs stop featuring super-skinny models? No. Did high fashion models have a major change in figure size? absolutely not.

Recently, not only have spectators been watching these models as they sit wide eyed with mouths hung open, people have been taking action and making the move toward a healthier model, and people are certainly taking notice. In a recent Anthropology catalog, a featured model caught glowing eyes with a healthy ensemble. Is this the start of a new movement? We sure do hope so. With advertisements like these, maybe we’re steering away from the ideal of a size zero or double zero model.

Recently even those more characteristically in the public eye have made the move to rear from super-thin. As Rachel Zoe tried on dresses for a Bazaar photoshoot, she expressed her sincere gratification that touch ups were made to take her from a frail 0 to a healthy 8. Zoe says of the positively changing scene, “I don’t have one client right now who is a size 0. All of my clients have athletic or curvy, healthy bodies.” Let’s hope we can keep it up. It’s going to be one tough battle, but if everyone pulls through you better believe it’s possible.