As Supermodels Thin, Laws of Physics Bend to Breaking Point

NEW YORK CITY. Growing concern over the ever-diminishing size of the world’s top models has resulted in calls for reform, but scientists who have studied the phenomenon say such actions may be too little and too late.

“At some point one of the top models will collapse like a black hole,” said MIT physicist Anthony Kresge. “If that happens, any nearby coffee and cigarettes–which is what they live on–will be sucked in with her.”

The decision to exclude skinny models from Spain’s “Pasarela Cibeles” or “Parade of the Anorexics” was dictated by public safety concerns, said Concha del Guero, Deputy Minister of Traffic and Parking for the Madrid regional government. “These women-they are so slim as to be invisible when they turn sideways,” he noted. “They are a danger to themselves when they cross the street.”

In the United States, super-slender models have caused an old expression–“She’s so skinny she has to pass a place twice to make a shadow”–to move from the realm of hyperbole to reality. “Tiffany Marie Chamberlain was 1st runner-up at our Miss Sorghum Festival, and when she walked by the judge’s stand it was like she wasn’t there,” said Virginia Leuske, the organizer of the annual pageant in Chillicothe, Missouri. “Roy Clayton, Jr., who’s been a judge ever since his wife died, asked her to take another turn and finally after three passes she produced enough mass to create some shade.”

In rainy Seattle, aspiring models often slip between the grates of storm drains during heavy downpours, eventually ending up in the Pacific Ocean. “It’s annoying,” said Caitlin Anderson-Dow. “Like one minute I’m just standing there being cool and the next some stinky guy is trying to haul me into a fishing boat.”

Personal hygiene becomes an issue for models in Manhattan apartments too small for bathtubs says Ryan Ralston of New York’s Elite modeling agency. “They take showers but they don’t get wet because they can fit between the streams from the shower head,” he complains. “We have to wash them by hand using pipe cleaners.”

For men attracted to the glamorous girls who prowl the catwalks of the fashion industry there is an obvious upside to their self-denial. “I order an entree and give my girlfriend Liz the parsley,” says man-about-town Evan Liddell. “She always ends up taking some home to her roommates.”