“An Italian fashion chain has stoked controversy with an advertisement featuring a naked anorexic woman. The ad, which is intended to raise awareness about eating disorders, is timed to coincide with Milan fashion week. The Nolita ad campaign has shocked people with its image of an anorexic woman… Flash&Partners, the fashion group that owns the Nolita brand, said in a statement that Toscani’s aim was ‘to use that naked body to show everyone the reality of this illness, caused in most cases by the stereotypes imposed by the world of fashion.’ The woman in the photo is Isabelle Caro from France, who is 27 years old and has been anorexic for 15 years. She weighs a mere 31 kg (68 lb) and suffers from the skin disease psoriasis. ‘I hid myself and covered myself up for too long,’ she told the magazine Vanity Fair in an interview to be published Wednesday. ‘Now I want to show myself without fear, even though I know my body is repugnant.’” — Der Spiegel (Germany)

There were actually two versions of the ad. The first shows the model seated, breasts visible. Presumably this racier version of the photo (My God! Tits!) was for the more tolerant European market. If you look at it long enough, though, you realize that the shocking thing is not the model’s deflated breasts but rather her face and her arms. The second version of the ad shows the model imitating the pose of Ingres’ famous odalisque. Ironically, it is difficult to call this version more “chaste” than the first one. Your eye wanders over her bony figure to rest on the psoriasis rash on her ass. Surely this should be considered more obscene than some bare boobs.

The model is a French woman named Isabelle Caro. Evidently she is a comedian, which adds a further touch of grotesquerie to the whole campaign. Are we supposed to laugh at her self-destruction? You can find her resume online, which includes a gallery of pictures showing her in a swimsuit. Ms. Caro maintains a blog (in French) where you can find even more pictures. And she used to maintain a blog specifically about her anorexia. For some reason it has gone offline, but you can still find a cache of it on Google. The title was “L’Anorexia ou le besoin de vivre” — Anorexia or the need to live. Evidently she equates the need to live with the need for attention, since she is an odd mixture of anorectic and exhibitionist. (”Odd” in the sense that the exhibitionism of anorectic models usually stops short of exhibiting anorexia itself.)

The avowed purpose of the ads is to raise awareness of anorexia. Many other commentators have dissected this intention and its potential for hypocrisy. You also have to wonder about its potential for perversity. One of the most active pages on PervScan concerns feederism, the fetish involving morbid obesity. If there are people who get off on Big Beautiful Women, must there not also be those who get off on the opposite? Yes, there are men who harbor a fetish for anorexia or, more properly, for girls suffering from anorexia. As is always the case in matters perverse, wherever there is something unusual, there is someone else who derives sexual excitement from it — which makes you wonder if Ms. Caro’s next occupation might be neither comedian nor fashion model but porn star.

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