Have you noticed for about two years now...

[Lori]

that every single magazine cover when you're on the checkout line at the grocery store--if not talking about Jen and Brangelina or Tom and Katie--is about which celebrities are too fat and which are too thin?

I always complain about this, but it makes me crazy. These stupid magazines will go on and on each week about how fat some celebrity is, and then they lose weight, and for a week the magazines think they look good, and then for weeks they talk about how they're dangerously thin. Or, they talk about how freakishly thin some celebrity supposedly is, and then a year later are talking about how fat they look.

My particular peeve is when you see a picture of a now-too-thin celebrity like Nicole Richie, and they show a picture of her from a few years ago where they now say she was "healthy-looking," but when the picture was actually published, the magazines were all catty about how fat she looked. It's ridiculous.

I've decided that, somewhere in America, there are six women who are exactly the right size for the people who write these magazines. Everybody else is much too fat or much too thin.

[Danielle]

I've decided that, somewhere in America, there are six women who are exactly the right size for the people who write these magazines. Everybody else is much too fat or much too thin.

I'm not even sure there are 6 ;).



I knew that when I saw Katie Holmes described as "curvy" there was no longer any hope for our society.

[Marzipan]

Well, insecurity a very good marketing ploy. If you're feeling a little bit plump, it's satisfying to read about how OMG!1!! Victoria Beckham is TEH ANOREXIC!1! Women can think to themselves, "Well, she may be fabulously dressed and rich and I'd bang her husband in a public restroom given half the chance, but at least I don't look like my body has been replaced by an erector set. Yes, she is too thin. I'll just eat my hamburger and think fat, happy thoughts."

And when actresses are too fat, women buy magazines to compare themselves. Women who are thinner than said celebrity are consoled that some aspect of their lives is far superior to Fat Hollywood Lady's and women who are heavier than the woman depicted have their insecurities confirmed and will buy the magazine's next issue, featuring an article all about how you can lose 45 pounds in 3 days by using the Secret Hollywood Diet! Information about which can be ordered from one of their advertisers! For only $39.99! Plus shipping! And tax!

[MathSpeak]

They called someone else curvy, Danielle... and I was like HER? Who the heck was it??? darn, I can't remember. They'd probably have to do a 3 page pull-out to get all of my curves in there :rofl

[Brooke]

Well, insecurity a very good marketing ploy. If you're feeling a little bit plump, it's satisfying to read about how OMG!1!! Victoria Beckham is TEH ANOREXIC!1! Women can think to themselves, "Well, she may be fabulously dressed and rich and I'd bang her husband in a public restroom given half the chance, but at least I don't look like my body has been replaced by an erector set. Yes, she is too thin. I'll just eat my hamburger and think fat, happy thoughts."



ROFLMAO

Very well put.

[Jejune]

It's exhausting. It's socially unacceptable to say that someone overweight is gross or sick, because we all know that being overweight is unhealthy and that we don't want people to think we're *gasp* fat! But because of thin being the ideal, it's totally acceptable for people to say that thin is gross and sick and that a thin person looks like a sack of bones and vomit and REAL women have curves, while it would never be OK to say in any serious way that a fat woman looks like a mattress with a string tied around the middle. And it SHOULDN'T be OK. It just shouldn't be OK to say that thin women are gross either.

I get a little defensive because I'm underweight. I know it's a problem, but it's not one that's helped by seeing covers of magazines that say things like, "No man wants to touch a skinny woman! More INSIDE!"

Anyway, I think that the whole cycle is beneficial to advertisers, as Marci pointed out, but I don't think hating on anyone's body, fat or thin, is good for us. And I think that when we're brought to hate on the bodies of women who are unusually beautiful, it makes us hate ourselves all the more, because, even if I am fatter or thinner than Gwyneth Paltrow or Katie Holmes, I am simply not going to look as clean and polished and lovely as either of them, even if I don't think they're the prettiest women on the planet. I don't have an army of airbrushers and professional photographers following me around, and loathing women who look better than I do isn't going to make me look or feel better. I think the only way it works is if we absolutely and truly stop caring about those people at all in terms of how they look or following their lives. It ain't gonna happen - I just think that's the only way to shut down the cycle.

[Lori]

I think the other issue is recognizing, which the media doesn't seem to, that there is a much, much larger range of healthy bodies than we're told is acceptable (it seems to me that if you don't fit within about a 10-pound range around the "ideal," you're either too fat or too thin by media standards), and like Kristen said, just not caring so much.

I think part of the problem is how overblown the "obesity epidemic" has gotten, to the point where drinking a soda (or, God forbid, giving a sip of it to your child) is basically seen as akin to shooting up heroin, but possibly worse, because at least heroin addicts are thin. And I think that people feel so attacked by the "obesity epidemic" and the idea it promotes that anybody who is on the right slope of the body weight bell curve is a major threat to public health and human decency that there's a backlash in the opposite direction, as well. I tend to think that, if we didn't get so freaked out over the idea of obesity, then obesity wouldn't be such a health issue (since less people would probably diet and get into cycles of losing and gaining weight which are much more dangerous than maintaining a higher body weight), and there also wouldn't be so much of a backlash about women who are "too thin."

I think that, with weight, we've tried to make obsessions with appearance respectable and even desirable by saying it's all about "health," when it's really all about vanity. And if we were able to admit that--that we don't care that people being fat is bad for their health (because the research on that is pretty sketchy, at the level at which the vast majority of overweight Americans are overweight) but because we don't like looking at fat people and that we don't care if skinny women aren't healthy but that we just prefer looking at women with big boobs--then I think a lot of this nonsense would go away. I jus don't see that happening any time soon.

[Sarah]

The whole situation with weight and the media makes me sick. It's like we as women are damned if we do, damned if we don't. Either we're too fat or too thin, too this or too that. And of course, there's always some expensive remedy to make us "all better."

One of the things that really gets me is magazines like Cosmo and Glamour. They have articles telling you to love yourself just as you are, but then their advertising tells us the exact opposite. They do it with tobacco ads too. Almost every magazine has an article about how bad smoking is for you and how only a moron would smoke, but then on the next page, there's a tobacco ad!

[Kristen]

It's exhausting. It's socially unacceptable to say that someone overweight is gross or sick, because we all know that being overweight is unhealthy and that we don't want people to think we're *gasp* fat! But because of thin being the ideal, it's totally acceptable for people to say that thin is gross and sick and that a thin person looks like a sack of bones and vomit and REAL women have curves, while it would never be OK to say in any serious way that a fat woman looks like a mattress with a string tied around the middle. And it SHOULDN'T be OK. It just shouldn't be OK to say that thin women are gross either.

I get a little defensive because I'm underweight. I know it's a problem, but it's not one that's helped by seeing covers of magazines that say things like, "No man wants to touch a skinny woman! More INSIDE!"

Amen, and amen. This is a sore point for me too, because even though I am not as tall and slim as you are, I've still had my fair share of, "ohhhh, you look so gaunt and sunken!" sort of comments and it really irritates me that people think that sort of thing is acceptable(particularly if the person from which the comment came is of larger proportions).

and skinny jokes are hard on women, but I know, from being married to a very slim husband, they're awfully hard on guys too, because guys are NOT "supposed" to be skinny. I worry about Joshua, because he is built exactly like Steve is. Hopefully we can help him to be more confident than Steve, so he's more impervious to the skinny barbs.

[Lori]

I remembered that the other thing that was driving me crazy about this is the whole "Tyra Banks is so fat" field day the media's been having for months now.

Tyra Banks is not fat. She has body fat, but she is far from "fat," whether the media takes that to mean she's unhealthy or unattractive. No, she doesn't look like a runway model anymore, but she's 33 years old, and runway models are in their late teens most of the time. The idea that she's fat is just ridiculous.

It's crazy that anyone Tyra Banks' size or bigger is "too fat" and anybody smaller than Katie Holmes is "too thin."

[Danielle]

ITA Lori. Personally, I think that in the media it's actually equally acceptable to call someone "fat" or "skinny". I agree that IRL it's much more acceptable to say "Wow, she's disgustingly skinny" as opposed to "Wow, she's disgustingly fat" and I think that's because we, as a society, have been conditioned to think that skinny is good and no one would ever be offended by being called skinny. Not that I think that's right at all, it's just the way we have been conditioned.

[Lori]

Danielle, I think that's right. I do think that, though, when it comes to people who are at very extreme ends of the weight range, people are just as if not more cruel to fat people. I know a few very large women (like 300+ lbs. large) and people have no shame about making rude comments. A skinny person might be called "disgustingly thin," but many people are literally disgusted by very fat people, and they make no effort to hide it. I have a close friend who is very large, and there is a very real difference between how she gets treated in stores and restaurants and other public places and how I do. I'm a large person, but I'm also well within the range of normal, and I never have people treat me rudely or condescendingly. But, when I go out with her, waitresses and store clerks and people who would usually be very friendly and helpful to me, if I was alone, are rude and curt and just generally very unpleasant. And in those cases they wouldn't ever come out and make a rude comment, but it's very clear from their behavior that they do not like fat people and would prefer to not have to be around them at all. I'm not sure that a very skinny person going into the same places would have the same reaction. It seems more likely that they might comment on how thin they were but then treat them with the same respect they'd treat anyone else with, not to mention the kind of discrimination present in other settings. I've mentioned this before, but it is just a nightmare for her to get good medical care. Anything that happens is blamed on her being too fat, even in cases where her weight has nothing to do with it. It reminds me of something I read a while back, where a man with a very obese wife was saying that, if his wife got shot, the first thing the ER doctors would say was, "Well, if you weren't so fat, you'd be a smaller target." ;)

I agree completely that, in general, people are probably less likely to make comments about someone being, say, 20 pounds overweight than 20 pounds underweight (unless we're talking about the media), though.

I think you're right on about part of the issue being that people are so conditioned to think that thin is good that they don't realize that somebody might be hurt by comments about their thinness. I honestly think that many people see calling someone "disgustingly skinny" the same as, say, calling Donald Trump "disgustingly rich." They almost see it as a compliment, because they don't think it's really possible to have too much money or weigh too few pounds. It's more a term of envy, if a cruel one. That doesn't make it okay, but I do think it comes from a different place than the kind of nastiness people have toward very fat people.

[Jejune]

Lori, I agree, and I have to apologize if I made it sound like skinny people are treated worse than people who are seriously overweight. We're not. In fact, we're treated generally better, because the rude comments are usually envious, even when it comes down to health. People imply that they'd be willing to trade their health for thinness.

I think a skinny person overall has an easier time in our society than a fat person, but I think the idea that skinny is good is ingrained enough that assaulting it is also though to be a good thing, when in fact, none of it is healthy.

[Lori]

Kristen, I didn't think it was a matter of saying that skinny people are treated worse, or the other way around. I completely agree that, on average, people who are thinner probably get more negative comments than people who are fatter. I don't think most people will say anything about weight to someone who is 20 or 30 or 40 pounds overweight, but they'd probably be quick to comment on someone 5 or 10 pounds underweight. Whether they mean it as a compliment (backhanded or not) is irrelevant, at least to me. I personally don't feel like my body is anybody else's business, and it drives me crazy when people, who I'm sure think they are giving me a compliment, mention that I've lost weight, because I don't think it's any of their damn business or anything they should be commenting about. If I got comments like that on a regular basis, I'm sure it would bother me a lot.

But I do think that there just isn't the disgust and hatred of very thin people that there is for the extremely fat, and I think that extremely fat people do face a lot of very real social and economic penalities for their body size that even the most extremely thin people don't. I think part of the problem is that we see that as okay, since we see it as something that they could change if they don't like how they are treated, or that somehow shaming and rejecting people will get them to make the choices about their bodies we want them to make. But that happens on the other end, too, because I've know people with eating disorders who had families that apparently believed that telling them they looked sick or disgusting or ugly was going to make them get better. It's just a very weird, punitive mindset, but that's a whole different issue.

[Jejune]

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. That's what I'm trying to say and utterly failing to say, so thank you.

When I was pregnant with Nora, I got especially frustrated with this. I was sick and couldn't seem to gain enough weight. I was worried about it and also, for the first time while pregnant, I didn't so much look pregnant as like I was putting on a little weight. When people commented on my weight - and they did, frequently - I felt like, "My god. We're nasty about weight at all other times of life. Can't pregnancy be the one time when it's totally socially unacceptable to say ANYTHING about a woman's weight?" I don't think saying, "Did you lose weight?" is a compliment to an overweight woman either. People should just say, "You look very nice today," or something. I hate that people comment on weight at all, positively or negatively. It seems rude no matter what. It's one thing if someone proudly tells you, "I lost 10 pounds!" or if you know someone is dieting, but another completely to talk about their weight when uninvited.

[Sarah]

I hate that people comment on weight at all, positively or negatively. It seems rude no matter what. It's one thing if someone proudly tells you, "I lost 10 pounds!" or if you know someone is dieting, but another completely to talk about their weight when uninvited.

I agree with this 100%. I don't know it is that it's acceptable for people to make comments about another person's weight, even if it's a compliment. Weight is such a sensitive subject anyway.

[Lori]

I'm not sure why it's acceptable, either. Honestly, I feel like somebody asking me, out of nowhere, if I've lost weight, is on the same level of asking me, apropos of nothing, if I'd masturbated recently or if I was having my period. It's just not their business.

I do get concerned that we're more and more making people's bodies a matter for public attention rather than something to be left to the personal, and that makes me very, very uncomfortable. I hate things like schools putting childrens' BMIs on their report cards. I feel like my body is nobody's business but me, possibly Sean, and my kids when they're using it (pregnant or nursing), and that my child's body is their business, and only mine to whatever extent I can help them make good choices. I certainly don't think it's the business of random strangers or the state or whoever else wants to get involved, and I wish we'd stop letting that be acceptable.

[Kristen]

People imply that they'd be willing to trade their health for thinness.

Yup, again. This was made particularly clear to me when I was pregnant and had been exceedingly ill for months, had been in the hospital for hydration IVs, and had lost 10 pounds in a week, and someone said, "Oh, we should all be so lucky!". Excuse me??

I wanted SO badly to say something like, "You know what? If you really want what I have, you could just stick your fingers down your throw 5 or 6 times a day and achieve the same effect. Or maybe you could be REALLY lucky and get bulimia." :rolleyes

I seriously think that people might just envy a cancer patient's weight loss!! If people knew what I'd have given to be a functioning pregnant person instead of a laying-on-the-couch-wanting-to-die pregnant person...I'd have taken those 10 pounds and way more for that! :(

Being thin has been made into such an idol, people are willing to give up things far more valuable in order to achieve it.

[Lori]

I seriously think that people might just envy a cancer patient's weight loss!!

I've mentioned this before, but I worked with a woman who had stomach cancer, and she seriously had people complimenting her on her weight loss after they knew she had cancer, and telling her, in a completely serious way, that at least the up side of the experience was losing weight. She had stomach cancer, could barely eat anything, and was going through chemo! That people would see losing weight as a "plus side" to the experience is just crazy.

[Jejune]

Lori, I can't even begin to describe to you the way in which I'm shuddering right now. AHHHHHHH!

[Kristen]

I think you're right on about part of the issue being that people are so conditioned to think that thin is good that they don't realize that somebody might be hurt by comments about their thinness. I honestly think that many people see calling someone "disgustingly skinny" the same as, say, calling Donald Trump "disgustingly rich." They almost see it as a compliment, because they don't think it's really possible to have too much money or weigh too few pounds. It's more a term of envy, if a cruel one. That doesn't make it okay, but I do think it comes from a different place than the kind of nastiness people have toward very fat people.

Well, it depends...like on Sunday, someone told me they hated me because I am so tiny. That didn't offend me, because it was clear that the person saying it would have been happy to look like me. and sometimes I've been told I was disgustingly thin, but it was not in an offensive way.

What aggravates me is when people use words like, "sunken", or "gaunt", or "gross". There's no way to take that nicely. Like, someone told me, after I'd had a baby and was a little heavier, that I was just looking so sunken and gaunt before. :mad But she'd have been SO offended if she lost weight(she's overweight) and I said something like, "Oh, you look so much better now. You'd been looking so puffy and round and bulgy before." It's just not right....I'd never say that to her, and she shouldn't say it to me.

[Jejune]

It's actually the "I hate you" comments I dislike the most. They're couched as "ha ha!" but there's enough of a real barb there that they sting. But you can't act stung because it's a "compliment".

[Kristen]

Lori, that is sad and ridiculous, and makes me mad for that poor lady. Here she is, looking DEATH in the face, and people are excited that she's lost weight?? What is WRONG with people??? augh!!!!

I was telling someone the other day about my horrific experience after I'd had my tonsils out. I couldn't eat normally for about a month, swallowing was excruciating, and it was just out and out miserable. Not as bad as pregnancy, but it's right up there. I was trying explain just how bad I felt and I said it was so bad, I lost something like 15 pounds, and the woman I talked to expressed envy and said something about how my husband must have been so happy. ????

I never am quick with retorts or I'd have explained that no, my husband likes me better as a functioning human being WITH the 15 pounds. Being sick is NOT an enviable state, I am sorry! Eating right and exercising is a much healthier and happier way to lose weight. I can't think of any diet or exercise program that could be more miserable and life-altering than my tonsillectomy recovery or my pregnancies, or worse, than that poor lady's cancer. :(

[Kristen]

That's interesting, Kristen...I guess in those cases, it is so manifestly obvious to me that the person is really just envious. and as long as the person in question doesn't treat me hatefully, I'm not offended, because they really don't MEAN that they hate me.

It's the comments when there is no "haha" bit at all that get me, because they're unvarnished rudeness.

[Marzipan]

I've had weight issues my whole life. I had an eating disorder during my teen years and had a truly spectacular Jessica Rabbit body for a while after I was able to overcome that. Then I started two medications which interacted badly and caused my thyroid to all but shut down and I gained a lot of weight. Then some depression issues cycled in and I was miserable for a long time and the weight and depression fueled each other. It was a long time before they figured out what happened and I'm stuck trying to lose the weight now. I've accepted myself as I am now, although I'm committed to getting back into shape. Surprisingly, I'm much more self confident with all of the extra weight than I ever was with the skinny body or the pinup girl body. I eat very nutritiously most of the time and I'm losing the weight steadily and healthfully while enjoying a more active lifestyle with my husband and kids. It's funny though, because people still seem to feel the need to "console" me about the weight I gained. They tell me I carry it extremely well, or that I'm so pretty it doesn't matter, or other well-meaning platitudes. I have to laugh that people seem to think I can't be happy with myself and they try to make me feel better when I feel pretty fine already. I want to get my old body back (or at least a semblance of it) for a number of reasons, but it's not the most pressing thing in my life. I think if we focused more on keeping our bodies healthy rather than conforming them to a certain size, we'd all be better off. Despite the excess weight, my heart rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels are the envy of my slim father.

To address the envying of the sick, that's been around for ages, especially during the Victorian period and the turn of the century. Consumption was romanticized, and frail, waifish women with a waxy pallor and delicate constitution were the envy of the other ladies.

[Lori]

I think if we focused more on keeping our bodies healthy rather than conforming them to a certain size, we'd all be better off.

:yup I've been, at various times in the last ten or twelve years, extremely unfit at about 150 lbs, very fit at 205 lbs, extremely unfit at about 195 lbs, and very fit at 160 lbs, based upon things like blood pressure, resting heart rate, and stamina. In all cases, how active I am is the thing that makes the difference, much more than how much I weigh. The studies I've seen have showed that, when you control for activity level, people who are overweight are no more unhealthy (or healthy) than people at an ideal weight or who are underweight. The issue is that overweight people are, on average, more likely to be inactive that thinner people, but it really doesn't seem to be being overweight that's the case of health problems. Diet and especially activity levels are, and when you look at overweight people who are active and eat relatively healthy diets, there just isn't the risk there that we are told is there for ALL overweight people, and when you look at thinner people, if they are sedentary and don't eat well, they have the same risks that are always attributed to being overweight.

I think a very sad comment on how we view these things is that yesterday I, as a fat nearly-30-year-old, was able to outlast a slim 12-year-old neighbor at Dance Dance Revolution by a good margin. I think we're so focused on how big or small kids are that we don't even care if they ever get off their butts. As long as they aren't visibly fat, we have no problem cutting gym programs or having them sit in front of video games all day. It's not health we're concerned about, but body size.

I'm sure there are reasons for why research is continually misinterpreted in a way that makes it seem as if being fat is, in itself, a health problem and that losing weight (no matter how it's done) is some sort of cure for things, but it is a misinterpretation of most of the research. I think if we just accepted that being healthy isn't a matter of what your body looks like, but what you do with it and put into it, people would be much healthier. Of course, the diet industry would stop making billions of dollars a year, as well...

[malcontent]

It seems like in tabloid-land, the difference between anorexia and morbid obesity is about 10 pounds.

[Lori]

It seems like in tabloid-land, the difference between anorexia and morbid obesity is about 10 pounds.

Okay, I need to hire you to take what I was trying to say in about four rambling paragraphs and turn it into one succinct sentence. Are you available? ;)