Anorexia Mirabilis & The Donning of Hairshirts

The turnique and cilice of Louis IX, from the Treasury of Notre-Dame de Paris.

Working at a fashion modeling agency, I see extremely thin to starving women almost every day. Weight and the ideal feminine form are things that have evolved over the years, but from the Venus of Willendof through the corsets of the Victorian era, the buxom, curvy woman was considered ideal of earthly, erotic reasons. In the Middle Ages, a phenomena known as a kind of holy "loss of appetite" occurred among deeply devoted women. They were seen as taking such extreme dietary methods as complete starvation to meals that solely consisted of bread and wine alone. Today, scientists classify this as "Anorexia mirabilis", an anorexia in which the lack of appetite is cause by the spiritual nature of the person, often accompanied by similar ascetic lifestyle choices. I am reminded of the central character of Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest and his "absurd" diet of bread-soaked wine. A few books have been written on the subject, notably Holy Anorexia by R.M. Bell and Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women by C.W. Bynum. This subject remains controversial, but I believe there is a major difference between Anorexia Mirabilis and Anorexia Nervosa.

Another asetic fashion that fascinates me is the hairshirt, also known as the cilice. Saint Louis, Charlemange, Sir Thomas More and Thomas Becket of Canterbury were among the famous wearers of the cilice. For years, I never really understood the mystery of the hairshirt. The idea of wearing something which causes suffering is certainly the polar opposite of fashion today! Hairshirts remain one of the truly important points of Christianity for me, proving how our daily actions, even down to the choice of clothing we wear, can reveal the nature of one's soul.

Recently, thinness has come back into style, but for a completely different reason. It is mostly due to the ideal "camera beauty", as what the lens of a camera sees dictates the way we see ourselves. Thinness and tallness are prized highly in the world of fashion because it is extremely photogenic. Although, even this is not entirely true, as I often photoshop the bodies of already extraordinarily thin women for the sake of contemporary fashion.