Lolita or No-lita? Mixed messages in an anorexic model's death

She was a "fashion victim" in the fullest sense of the term.

 

Isabelle Caro won fame by posing naked for a 2007 advertising campaign against anorexia by Italian clothing brand Nolita. The intended message of the emaciated child-woman's portrait was: "You don't want to look like this."

 

But in a celebrity-obsessed culture, too many people would do anything to see themselves up on that billboard–even adopt a dangerously unhealthy prepubescent look that is literally "to die for."

 

For more on this lethal example of René Girard's "mimetic double bind," read Why did Isabelle Caro die?