The hypocrisy of the New York Times — When it comes to anorexic fashion models, the Gray Lady turns a blind eye

Look at the picture above.

What do you see?

I see an ad from page 3 of today's New York Times.

I see two models whose weight combined might pass muster with the new body mass guidelines recently promulgated by fashion weeks in Madrid and Milan, which now bar stick-thin models in response to a spate of deaths by anorexia of models worldwide.

The New York Times, in a September 22, 2006 editorial, chastized the U.S. fashion industry for not adopting similar binding rules but instead making its guidelines voluntary.

Yet the paper's advertising department is happy to cash checks from Dennis Basso and any other company offering über-thin mannequins as hangers for their clothes.

The Times editorial follows.

Where Size 0 Doesn't Make the Cut

If fashion models were purebred dogs instead of underfed women, there would be an outcry over the abusive standards for appearing in shows and photo shoots. The prize for women who aspire to the catwalk is a ridiculous size 0, though overachieving undereaters seem to be reaching for size 00, which invites further starvation, serious illness and worse.

If the industry needed a wake-up call, it got one last month, when Luisel Ramos, an Uruguayan model who had been advised to lose weight, died of heart failure after taking her turn on the catwalk. She reportedly had gone days without eating, and for months consumed only lettuce and diet soda.

Nevertheless, organizers of Madrid's Fashion Week caught designer and fashionista scorn for banning the unreasonably thin from their show. The Madrid standard: a minimum body mass index of at least 18 — a measure of body fat based on weight and height. A reading of 18 is still underweight (18.5 to just under 25 is considered normal), but it is outsized among the ranks of supermodels, many of whom hover between 14 and 16.

While the just-completed New York Fashion Week carried on as usual, Milan Fashion Week officials were considering applying their own healthy standard for models.

It's doubtful that models will be in dressing rooms bulking up with cheeseburgers or anything more caloric than watercress to ''make weight,'' like prizefighters and amateur wrestlers. But ending the parade of the starved and sickly seems like a fashion trend worth following.