This Observer article provided some food for thought this morning.
Though I think the writer’s suggestion that “women are to blame for our obsession with being thin” is much too simplistic. It’s also ironic that while the ‘ideal body image’ has been getting thinner and thinner the average size of real people is in fact getting bigger.
The article mentions how past beauties such as Marilyn and Sofia would be out of work today, which made me wonder what would happen if the likes of Posh and Keira were transported back to the 1950s. They’d probably be hospitalised for their own good.
How did the ideal female body image end up becoming one that resembles a scrawny adolescent boy with breast implants? How far will this trend be allowed to go?
The small pic here is linked so it can be enlarged if you click on it. I cropped the model’s head to focus on the body. The collar and shoulder bones are almost poking through the skin, the elbows look creepily oversized and yet there are these two gravity-defying orbs stuck to the chest. 
casa azahar 
I get the creeps when I see these skin-and-bone women. They look weird in my eyes. It´s scaring that they´re role models and that this “fashion” gets fancy among little girls, not yet grown.
When dp was around 11-12 years, she had a classmate who had developed anorexia. That girl was so skinny that I thought she would break into pieces if hugged. I haven´t seen that girl since they left elementary school three years ago, and she was still extremely thin then.
I´ve been on the chubby side since I was eight. Even back in the sixties it was not OK to be a fat girl. To be a fat and smart girl was even worse.
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I reckon it’s a lot to with money. That might sound daft in the sense that one is spending less logically, in terms of food. But hey when did our western societies depend on rational logic Overall many of us go up and down in weight and so end up spending far more on clothes, as we try to cope with eweight changes. Not to mention all the magazines we buy, and food faddy stuff, and vitamins.
No way is the ‘ordinary woman’ to blame. We are assaulted continually by a barrage of changing fashion ideas perpetuated by the mass media. And it’s hard for the sanest person not to be affected by it.
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I’ve edited the original post a bit – wasn’t happy with the first pic I’d found as it looked more like a sick person and I was trying to establish a visual connection between extreme skinniness and the fashion biz/media, etc.
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Maybe being a bit older than a real youngster 😉 I actually find extreme thinness repulsive. Personally I don’t find that pic you’ve used in the least attractive. So there must be some hard core brain washing going on to make young people think it desirable.
I actually nearly had a therapist at one point whom I flatly refused seeing because her extreme thinness fraked me out.
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Quite agree that the new pic is quite creepy, Fanny, but I think it suits the conversation better than the previous one as this is what is actually being accepted as a ‘beauty ideal’ nowadays.
Definitely there is media brainwashing going on. Or if we want to consider conspiracy theories – what better way to keep half the population (women) doing grunge jobs for little pay than to have them put – and willingly! – on starvation rations.
I mean, how the hell can a person even think straight on 900 calories a day?
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Part of the thing I find so freaky about extreme thinness, is what it says about ‘food’. To me food is one of the real joys of life and so life affirmative and positive.
When I was younger I was fairly naturally thin but always ate heartily. I just never thought about it. My body did what I wanted it to, I liked it. I never really thought of it as fat or thin. I’m a bit plumper now, though healthy as far as I know, and I still eat what I want as a matter of course and try to ignore all the media crap and pressure as much as possible.
But ‘ageing’ is my big hangup!! Don’t get me on that! Oh well you win some, you lose some.
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I remember the first time I realized I was overweight. I was 19, and realized we were shopping for my school clothes in the “Chubby” section at Sears. There was even a *sign*, spelling it out!
Then there was the first time I weighed myself, on a scale I found in my friend’s garage — I weighed 128 at age 13; I was about 4’11” then. I’m 5’2″ now (and shrinking — gravity sucks!).
That model’s thighs in the picture are really bizarre — they’re actually bowed *away* from the mid-line of her body! Yikes!
Diane
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Typo — that second sentence should have read “I was 10, …”.
GOT to get new glasses!
Age sucks, too!
D
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I’m starting yet another diet tomorrow. To lose weight, yes, but more importantly to become healthier. I’ve gotten huge the last 3 years. It’s starting to scare me. And I feel awful all gthe time.
But I don’t want to look skinny like the models. Even if it was possible.
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Did this all start with ‘Heroind Chic’? Pasty-faced, spotty adolescents seem to be the fashion photographers model-of-choice.
Mind you…I think you’ve lumped together various archetypes in your description. For coture, anorexia is the standard. The breast implants thing goes more with a trashy, porno-queen, Paris Hilton, celeb culture aesthetic. (If you can call it ‘aesthetic’.) Along with this has come a fashion for pubic depilation – ‘the Hollywood’ – although thankfully there seems to have been a counter-revolution lately.
(aside) The other day we passed a very large-breasted woman in a very loe-cut top. She was shooing away some bees – even though they weren’t doing anything to harm her. Cath said, in a rare moment of bitchiness:
“Maybe she’s afraid they’ll sting her on the breasts and they’ll swell up like balloons” 🙂
Yup – there are so many attractive body shapes that it seems odd to fetishise the one that it would be most uncomfortable to lie on top of. That said…I will admit to a taste for the ‘gamine’.
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Eek! My typing’s getting worse!
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It amuses me that these clothes hangers are now chic. I take that back, it doesn’t amuse me as I have a pre-teen daughter who I am desperately trying to keep on a healthy diet regime.
The editors of the magazines who promote this skeletal form should be arrested under health and safety law. Or at the very least, sued into bankruptcy.
From ancient times we have a clear idea of how a true goddess should look, and I think the best term is rubenesque.
I have my own rubenesque goddess, she-who-must-be-adored, and she makes me happy. Most blokes I know also have similar goddesses, there again my friends and I are all bursting through middle-age like a tribe of unruly penguins 😉
Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.
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Penguins? Nice one! 🙂
I think of myself as ‘A Large Mammal’. A wildebeest, say. Or a whale.
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“The editors of the magazines who promote this skeletal form should be arrested under health and safety law. Or at the very least, sued into bankruptcy.” (Math)
If only it could be so. I actually brought up that idea with Nog the other day saying it should be illegal to instill such feeings of self-loathing in 8-year-old children. Because they get them young, don’t they? It seems clearly a form of child-abuse to me, but as Nog said, it would be very difficult to make this claim stick without all the ‘freedom of speech’ elements getting up in arms.
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It’s not so much making the claim stick, it’s actually framing a law that will do what you want it to, but *not* do what you don’t want it to, that’s very difficult in these areas.
Making the claim stick, on the other hand, is just what you need to do to pursue a successful civil action (ie suing them into bankruptcy).
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And imagine the counter-claims against those instilling the ‘thin is bad’ message – for health risks linked to overweight.
Yup, The Law is seldom a panacea and should be used sparingly.
Anything shall be permitted except for that which is expressly prohibited.
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Well, the thing that got me about the article was all the name dropping of people I have no idea who are. If you showed me a picture of Posh or Keira I would not be able to identify them.
The irony of all this is that while we are being presented with this anorexic ideal of beauty in film, magazine, adverts, the vast majority of the American public is becoming more and more obese. The more you obsess about being thin and not eating, the more you eat, I guess.
I am one of the “goddesses” adored by my husband and feeling that I should like to weigh a tad bit less in order to keep my knee joints healthy as I age (yes, aging is a bitch and I HATE my glasses), and not so that I can become anorexically thin.
Perhaps the whole problem is the emphasis on clothes and fashion. I admit that I am totally out of touch on that front. I tend towards tie dye tshirts, plain cotton slacks and broomstick skirts I make myself. When I really want to dress up I have a green silk jacquard dress that I made myself 15 years ago that would look quite stylish on a statue of Athena or Diana. Perhaps this is why I don’t recognize the names. I simply don’t pay attention.
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Well, I also have spent a little time looking at the fashion model at the top of the page. Notice the lack of muscle tone. Yes, she is thin, and her belly is flat. But this is not because there are any abdominals there, there are virtually no muscles on her arms and legs. Her thighs have bruises, probably weak capillaries due to malnutrition. The whole thing is sad sad sad. And I don’t think her bikini looks any better for being on her emaciated body.
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The girl in the picture on the top is very sexy. The skinnier and leaner a girl is the smaller and rounder her ass is, which is as important as having a bright and beautiful face. Most skinny girls have sexy toned arms and legs which have a delicate feminine shape to them. It’s the tight small muscles on skinny girls that are so sexy. When a women gains weight she only adds layers of shapeless fat which covers up the character and sexy shape of her muscle and bone structure making her body bland. “Full figured” girls arms and legs more resemble sausages. When women gain weight their asses get wide and flat. Skinny girls with small tight toned muscles, most importantly a very small pert butt, are the sexiest. Just because women gain fat most easily around their hips does not in any way make it sexy, just as a beer belly is not sexy on a man just because its where here most easily gains weight.
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I have no idea who you are, Mick, but all I can say in response to your comment here is 🙄
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I was describing my ideal, which many men share. I think every one should like their body but you should never be satisfied unless you are extremely fit. Too many people preach that skinny lean girls don’t exist in real life. That’s BS, I see them everyday. And it’s not just the media saying that they are hot. When with a naked girl, skinny ones with lean bodied just feel sexier to the touch with their tight little curves. People act like fat is such a superficial thing to notice, but appreciating a girl’s thin lean body is no more, probably less, superficial then appreciating a girl’s beautiful face that she was simply born with. Some men do prefer girls with a bit of weight on them, to each their own, but men will get together to watch the Victoria Secret runway shows. You won’t find men gathering to watch chubby girls. And it’s not the media brainwashing people to like skinny girls, it’s simply that most skinny girls have cuter sexier butts and more shapely arms and legs.
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How did you end up posting on my blog, Mick?
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I was searching articles online and there was some link to this site, I read the article “the shape we’re in” and the comments, then I posted my opinion. I thought that’s how blogs work. Why, is this blog only for a certain club or something?
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no skinny
“Madrid’s fashion week has turned away underweight models after protests that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders.”
…but I guess it´s still a long way to go before the models look as real women…
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060912/od_nm/spain_models1_dc
me and tags…
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Wow! That is fabulous news, dragonqueen.
Interesting that Elite’s rep in New York went on about “discrimination against the model and what about the freedom of the designer”. 🙄
As if most models want to have to be so skinny. And I couldn’t give a toss about the ‘freedom of the designer’ to play on women’s insecurities by designing clothes that no Real Woman could ever fit into.
Nice to see that the official Association of Fashion Designers of Spain supports the restrictions.
Also good to see that Milan is going to do something similar. It’s about bloody time!
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