A Swedish doctor at an eating disorder clinic has made the explosive claim that modeling scouts wait outside to recruit anorexic patients.
“We find this absolutely reprehensible. They [talent scouts] have been standing outside our clinic and trying to pick up our girls because they know that they are skinny,” Anna-Maria af Sandeberg, chief doctor at the Stockholm Center for Eating Disorders told British newspaper Metro.
The patients who are allegedly being targeted are 14 and 15-year-old girls, Sandeberg told the paper.
The report doesn't specify what agencies the scouts were working for.
She said that as a result of the modeling scouts, the clinic had to change its policy that patients could walk outside.
The clinic has about 1,700 patients, according to Metro.
The story is the latest critique of the fashion industry, which is often accused of promoting unhealthy body image.
"Indeed it seems highly unlikely that an agency would have to waste its time "urging" a girl to lose weight when she is already anorexic to the point of hospitalization," writes Jenna Sauers at Jezebel. "Just pick her up out of that wheelchair, get that girl some five-inch heels, and stick her on the next flight to Paris."
And these disturbing anti-anorexia ads compare disordered women to fashion sketches.
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