If Daul was under pressure for the other things that a model may be under pressure for (and there are surely plenty, such as being away from family and friends, meeting unreasonable deadlines, compromising personal values to book a job, etc), then there are no mixed messages and there is no irony in that screencap of the Times Online.

It seems to me that Daul had severe depression, and I think acknowledgement of that and taking the opportunity to increase awareness of depression is being side-lined here in favour of making another criticism of the size of models.

Y’know, except in people’s minds.
As if that doesn’t matter! What it puts in people’s minds, hopefully to lodge there forever, is the whole point! That’s why the writer wrote it. I mean, if you don’t care about that, you might as well just get a computer to do that jo… oh. Right.

Not to sound like a Luddite, but sometimes I lament what the internet has done to the typo-visual arts. I live in a techy area, and it seems like the place is lousy with “graphic designers” working on web stuff, yet most of the web looks, and functions, like crap. The way I learned it… that entire page is a functional failure. (And as a side note: it also looks like crap.)
/rant

Make no mistake that these companies have total control over the advertisements that are placed within their pages and on their websites. The mixed-message of “big is beautiful” but “thin people sell more stuff!” is so aggravating that you have to wonder if these people even GET it.

I’m sure they do, which is the sick part. But as long as the media comes out with its once-or-twice a year, thin-brandishing article the executives feel like they’ve done a social service to all the self-hating fatties who were, undoubtedly, sticking their fingers down their throat mere moments before a magazine told them, “It’s ok to be you!”

But once all the warm fuzzies have dissipated, keep on reading so you can learn how to “Lose a dress size in a week.” Cause self-esteem is nice and all, but these people have magazines to sell.

And dressed in expensive garbage, at that. A bauble is, by definition, a trivial, showy piece of junk with no real value. It’s a trivializing, demeaning term for their own product, and a nonsensical one, considering their “baubles” are going for thousands of dollars. Either the advertisers are lacking a grasp of basic vocabulary, or they’re openly acknowledging that women would be happy with bubble gum rings, as long as they were shiny and cost a few month’s salary.