Amanda, this purity/thinness link is brilliant. I think we already know some of the answers to this question: “it’s worrisome in both cases to see what the next steps in appetite-denial will be.”
Plastic surgery! From labiaplasty to nose jobs to liposuction women who can’t, no matter how hard they try through diet or exercise or makeup or Spanx, make themselves feel like they measure up, there’s the knife. And for people who think plastic surgery is only the province of the rich, take a look at the back pages of any women’s magazine which always feature ads for *financing* your plastic surgery.
Glamour had the gall to run a “look at us! we’re featuring ‘fat’ models!” feature this month and almost all of the women in it used to be regular runway models who “let themselves go” and are now, like, a size 10. but they’re all insanely tall so a size 10 on them isn’t “fat” at all. And they’re far from ‘regular’ women. grr.

Of course, part of the problem with her analysis is that Americans are not all people, but fashion anorexia is a worldwide phenomenon.

Americans aren’t all people but we’re also not the only ones in the world with a weight problem. Pretty much the entire western world is heavier now than it was a few generations back, so there is fuel for this everywhere.

It’s also worth pointing out the related obsession with muscle definition in men. It seems healthier than being anorexic, but getting six pack abs requires quite a bit of time in the gym and a very rigid diet to maintain because the abs don’t really show until you hit remarkably low levels of body fat. The gym at my college has signs posted to the effect that no one is allowed to work out more than four hours per day - those signs are there for a reason.

“The gym at my college has signs posted to the effect that no one is allowed to work out more than four hours per day - those signs are there for a reason.”

Oookay…

4-hours a day? Unless you’re some sort of world-class athlete, that’s sick.  Even then, it’s probably still sick…

I guess the fatter we get the thinner we want the models to look.  What a weird country we are sometimes.  A healthy woman is a beautiful woman, full stop.

4-hours a day? Unless you’re some sort of world-class athlete, that’s sick.  Even then, it’s probably still sick…

Mike, we call those folks “trainorexic” in these parts.  Tacky, maybe.  But it’s stuck.

Tom #2 : Pretty much the entire western world is heavier now than it was a few generations back, so there is fuel for this everywhere.

Well, all those agrarian subsidies have to go somewhere. Seems they are going straight to the hips and the waist.

Also, a few generations back many people went hungry. Comparing the sizes of people who can’t afford bread or have food rationed with the sizes of those who don’t creates predictable results.

What I hate is that models are already underweight, and yet they are still photoshopped to look thinner!  I heard that in France, they are trying to pass a law to label photos that have been edited.  I have mixed feelings about this, but mostly I wish we had something like that in the United States.  The only downside I can foresee is that magazines might want even skinnier models.

“4-hours a day? Unless you’re some sort of world-class athlete, that’s sick.  Even then, it’s probably still sick…”

I suppose it would depend on the definition of “working out,” though it being a college gym makes me think we’re not talking about people with a lot of spare time who are whiling away their morning with a spin class, a racquetball game, strength training, a trot on the treadmill, and a few laps in the pool.

What I hate is that models are already underweight, and yet they are still photoshopped to look thinner!

They’re also photoshopped to make thin attractive.  That German magazine that’s switching to “regular” models cited the pain in the ass of photoshopping jutting bones and unsightly spine bumps as one of their motivations.  Sure, a well-planned limited calorie diet is healthier than constantly gorging, but flat-out starving yourself is not only bad for your health but also not great for the skin or hair.

Well, all those agrarian subsidies have to go somewhere. Seems they are going straight to the hips and the waist.

LOL

It’s also worth pointing out the related obsession with muscle definition in men.

Welcome to America.  Instead of taking apart the conditions that make women feel anxious about their bodies, we’ll just make men feel anxious about theirs as well.  But hey, it is a form of equality, right?  FTW!  </sarcasm>

With Photoshop, there are no longer the boundaries of reality in fashion.  Beauty editors and advertisers are no longer restricted to actual human dimensions.  I very rarely read fashion magazines but once in while I’ll grab a Marie Claire.  It’s like going through the looking glass.  The models look freakish to me and, upon analyzing the image, I’ll realize that they look freakish because they’ve been Photoshopped and chopped and cropped to impossible dimensions.  Parts of different photos are put together, limbs are stretched to ridiculus lengths, faces are slimmed down, body parts are missing due to bad cropping.  It’s downright bizarre.

“They’re also photoshopped to make thin attractive.”

Whenever I see blatant denial and cover-up, I always ask myself, “what are they trying to sell me?”  In this case, they are trying to sell a standard of beauty that is literally physically impossible to attain, so that the fat-shamed public will constantly be buying the next “miracle cure” (anything from a popular new “scientific” diet to vibrating mascara).  They will not stop until selling us lies until they are no longer making money from them, and they will continue to make money as long as people keep consuming those lies.

It seems to be all about transforming human bodies into commodities. What commodities rake in the most money? The scarce ones. So, in an overweight society, the scarce (and hence desirable) commodity is the thin body. The flip side of this was the Renaissance and Baroque eras—the general populace was starving, so the beauty standard was full-figured (Reubens/Reuenesque, anyone?). Unfortunately, people can’t be as easily traded as, say, corn, and thinness is a commodity (ugh) that can literally be created out of thin air. Hence, the starving people in the land of plenty.

The photoshopping models thing reminds me a lot of “Dawson’s casting”—getting models who are 25 years old to play teenagers, again holding up a standard that is literally impossible for a 15 year old to attain.

“Instead of taking apart the conditions that make women feel anxious about their bodies, we’ll just make men feel anxious about theirs as well.  But hey, it is a form of equality, right?  FTW!  </sarcasm>”

...what are you talking about?  Marketing decided that going after a relatively untapped half of the potential customer base was going to yield better dividends than trying to squeeze another few points out of the half they’ve already done to death.  Give them another decade and they might get around to seriously targeting not-white segments of the populace.  This is pretty much pure capitalism.

The gym at my college has signs posted to the effect that no one is allowed to work out more than four hours per day - those signs are there for a reason.

Which is amusing because the examples of the ultimate in male (and female, for that matter) cut musculature, bodybuilders, usually work out for less than an hour a day.  Any more than that is actually counterproductive to what they’re trying to accomplish.

The photoshopping models thing reminds me a lot of “Dawson’s casting”—getting models who are 25 years old to play teenagers, again holding up a standard that is literally impossible for a 15 year old to attain.

It works the other way around, too.  Many of the models in fashion and makeup ads are in their early teens.  I love seeing 14 year olds advertising anti-aging products.  Of course she doesn’t have any damn wrinkles!  She’s in junior high!

ive them another decade and they might get around to seriously targeting not-white segments of the populace.

They already do this. At least I see a lot of fast food chains, cigarette brands, and car companies do it.

“They”=corporations.

The models look freakish to me and, upon analyzing the image, I’ll realize that they look freakish because they’ve been Photoshopped and chopped and cropped to impossible dimensions.  Parts of different photos are put together, limbs are stretched to ridiculus lengths, faces are slimmed down, body parts are missing due to bad cropping.  It’s downright bizarre.

Thus the classic story of the model who walked into the office of a fashion magazine and wasn’t recognized even though her picture (post photoshopping) was on the wall.

I teach Photoshop/digital imaging in college, with the overt goal of learning image manipulation, and the covert one of increasing visual literacy. We pick apart these type of images, find the ticks, and sometimes try to duplicate them. Pretty eye-opening.

It works the other way around, too.  Many of the models in fashion and makeup ads are in their early teens.

Never thought about that, but it makes sense. For men, look at the actors in the ads for Viagra. It’s always guys in their late ‘30s and look like they’re in top physical shape. Not exactly the real world consumers.

I would add to fashion models here, female athletes like ballet dancers and gymnasts, who have to be genetically tall and thin or small and thin to start with, and then are required to both malnourish their bodies and push them very hard physically in order to attain the ideals of their sports, at least some of which is about appearance rather than performance.

But the, I tend to look at askance at the demands of careers that result in large amounts of bodily injury, which includes most of dance and sports anyway.  Harder for me to enjoy someone’s performance if I know what they’re doing will likely cripple them eventually.

Completely off-topic, but Amanda, please, please, please don’t keep me waiting any longer for your Mad Men review…

The freakishly thin starved to the point of appearing anorexic model look started with the misogynistic backlash of the 1980s.

For a while in the 1970s at the height of feminism models actually had the athletic look that said, I jog, do yoga, aerobics, play tennis etc.

If one looks at the models then they were thin but looked like they could play a game of tennis without collapsing.

Today in a world porked up on meat full of hormones aimed at growing meat faster and HFCS, a manufactured sugar analog that the body doesn’t digest selling thin is just another version of the comodification of that which is attainable by only the elite.

Historically it is a way in which the ruling elites set themselves off from the masses by presenting possessions and appearances unattainable by those masses.

High fashion is but one of those means.  Automobiles, houses etc are others.

In some ways it is a form of ideological class war, a way of saying we are different and better than the poor.  Our women can afford to be wasted to near physical uselessness fit only as ornament.

But the, I tend to look at askance at the demands of careers that result in large amounts of bodily injury, which includes most of dance and sports anyway.

Yeah, and it’s not just sports where appearance matters.  My cousin had to have operations on both of his shoulders when he was only 17, due to football injuries.  He’ll have limited movement for the rest of his life.  It’s great for kids and teens to be active, but I’m not convinced that organized sports are the best way to do that.  Too many coaches and parents just take it too seriously.  I’m sure there are plenty of great sports programs out there; we just have to be careful that kids don’t end up with concussions in an attempt to stave of the health risks of obesity.  It’s things like this that convince me that obesity panic is less about health and more about fat-shaming.

SuzyQ - Fat is definitely a class issue.  When was the last time you saw an uber-rich woman who was overweight?  The wealthiest women in the U.S. look emaciated and starved.

I find shapely, rubenesque women to be very sexy.  When I was a young man, I wondered whether there was something wrong with me in that I wasn’t interested in skinny women.  Ironically, I’m a lean and muscular 5’9, 200 pound man.  And I know there are other guys out there like me.  I wonder whether this problem is generated more by women than by men.  I think Kate Moss is at best a wallflower.

Nick, I know you didn’t mean to be offensive, but coming onto a thread like this to tell everyone what you personally find sexy isn’t actually any better than what’s being discussed in the post. Calling Kate Moss a “wallflower” (or characterizing anything about her personality, for that matter) based on her body type is as deeply problematic as fat-shaming.

I quote Philip Wylie, never a left-winger or a huge fan of dames: “Man can expect to transcend instinct at about the same time he transcends biology.”*

Similarly, woman can expect to get over desire at about the same time she gets over being alive, and not before.  Same difference.

*This is a quote from memory and I don’t pretend that it’s exact, but I’m pretty sure it’s medium-close.  Anybody who knows the specific wording is welcome to substitute that.

I wonder whether this problem is generated more by women than by men.

Well it’s somewhat true that at the critical time when girls are becoming women, they can be more judgmental than boys are of them.  In fact, it was a wonderful an liberating experience for when I went to college and realized that real men, even the skinny ones, don’t care if I’m skinny and even prefer “overweight”.  I wish I could convince every woman on Earth about my discovery.  However, it’s not simple enough to just blame women for their own problems.  Magazine editors aren’t all women.  Plenty of them are men and they push this image.  On top of that, there are enough men out their who will use women’s insecurities in their body image to gain control over them, regardless of their own opinion.  There have been plenty of men who seemed pretty interested in my overweight body, only to call me fat the second I refused to sleep with them.  Of course, most men aren’t like that, but enough of them are.  Girls are taught from infancy to care about what men think of them, and that men like skinny women.  As rhiain pointed out, making fun of someone for being too thin is really no improvement.  The problem is that women are still expected to determine their worth based on men’s approval.  The better message would be that it’s OK to be fat or thin, whether men you like or not.  A more realistic message for now would be that men will like you whether you’re fat or thin.

I was actually an art major for a while.  I’ve drawn nudes.  A pre-med class at Stanford actually would go to the Rodin Sculpture garden to look at the anatomy in his sculptures bc he was just that damn good.

There are proportions that most people fall into, and knowing them makes for some shortcuts in drawing.  It also helps you figure out foreshortening and other effects.

When I get my hair cut, I just boggle at the magazines.  Invariably, half a model’s body is missing.  Arms and legs are lengthened ridiculously, and the elbows are always scrubbed.  It’s kinda fun to find all the alterations, but it’s also very disturbing, b/c it’s not just any particular campaign or particular photographer.  It’s not a case of someone going for a distorted look.  It’s ALL of them doing the same kind of distortions.

As for Kate Moss, I never liked her b/c she almost never smiles.  She became huge for being a waif and she brought in “heroin chic”.  She has utterly perfected the vacant look of a battered woman, and it’s a rare photo where she doesn’t use it.  She’s glorified for it.  She’s made millions for it.

But even waif Kate isn’t small enough to shoot without major alterations anymore.  Magazines are full of battered looking, vacant-eyed women who have had half of their bodies photoshopped off.

In almost 50 years of existence on this planet I have not heard one person say anything at all about models ave to say how ridiculous they look. Now, granted, maybe deep down they are lamenting the fact that they don’t ‘look’ like them. However, I would be more inclined to believe that if it wasn’t for the fact that we keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Until I moved here to Tennessee from the northeast I had no idea that when I read statistics that TN is the third highest state in obesity rates what that really meant. The good ol’ conservative right-wing Christians here do not seem to give a rat’s ass about weight. They are just plain big people, from childhood on up. Yeah, there are people who worry about their weight and have self-esteem issue and all that but it seems most of society is doing just fine ignoring all that jazz.

There is a disconnect between theory and reality here: people may theorize about being thin but the reality is we are a fat nation. That will never change.

Thank you, Rhiain.

Seriously, Nick, nobody here gives a shit what you find sexy. It’s not all about you and your penis. And, speaking as a “Rubenesque” woman, I really dislike men who think they’re going to charm me by mocking other women’s bodies.

Oh, thanks, Caliban, for the fat-shaming. Fuck off already.

Ah, yes. The “yeah, but.. but… FAT PEOPLE!” defense. Protecting the stigmatization of our bodies since too damn long.

The most diabetic nation, and one of the fattest nations, is Mexico. The diabetes is due both to obesity/diet and to genetic background of many citizens - some of the First Peoples nations have extraordinarily high rates of diabetes when consuming a “Western” (non-traditional) diet.

The freakishly thin starved to the point of appearing anorexic model look started with the misogynistic backlash of the 1980s.

For a while in the 1970s at the height of feminism models actually had the athletic look that said, I jog, do yoga, aerobics, play tennis etc.

If one looks at the models then they were thin but looked like they could play a game of tennis without collapsing.

There’s a more complicated situation at work though.  Ignoring fetishists (since you can find someone with a fetish for everything somewhere), the models who are considered supermodels and the women who do modeling outside high fashion, the ones who have their job because of looking appealing to a largely male audience, are almost all bigger.  Not to say a lot of them aren’t on the thin side of the bell curve a few standard deviations away from the mean, but the majority aren’t rail-thin sticks who look like they’re on a diet of air and water.  Similarly the models who make the transition to some other job, like acting.

And amusingly, in films and TV, whenever you see “models” (such as any police procedural where theyr’e investigating the death of a model) they’re almost guaranteed to be larger than the walking human sticks that are the stereotype.

Pretty much the entire western world is heavier now than it was a few generations back, so there is fuel for this everywhere.

Only if you consider “the western world” to be “everywhere”.  You were doing so well at the beginning - trying to expand “people” beyond just America but then failed at the last hurdle.  I’m sure Asia and Africa are just ecstatic to know they aren’t real.

I still think this is really about gay designers who want women who look like young men.

Some runway models are transwomen. Exogenous estrogen (and silencing of testosterone) does change the fat distribution after a while, but generally not to the degree of the cisgender woman of same genetic background.

Thin non-curvy women are convenient models for designers, because minimal alteration is needed to fit the stick-thin model, and the designer uses several different models for the shows (and later, trunk shows). There’s a certain amount of laziness among designers.

A lot of the fashion culture’s predisposition toward thin models is sheer business, and not conscious misogyny.

I’m not sure if supermodel Veruschka and many other mod models of the 60s looked like they could lift a tennis ball, never mind a racket:

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/cm/shared/images/VQ/veruschka-model-de.jpg

60s mod: the precursor to the 90s waif.  Plus ça change.

the ones who have their job because of looking appealing to a largely male audience, are almost all bigger. 

This is a good point. Fashion modeling is it’s own rarefied universe with bizarre standards. What has happened is that the fashion modeling world has spilled into our popular culture and given them more exposure is magazines and as celebrities than before, bringing with them their strange standards. The thing is that they don’t realize that their standards have little value outside that universe.

How was it that the standards of the fashionmodeling world have been the ones that the public adopted as it’s beauty standards, as opposed to the body types of other types of celebrities?

I find it interesting that she chooses to lump in model and rich girl anorexia with Michelle Obama’s insistence on healthy food and eating - as if there is some sort of equivalence there in any known universe.

The two are NOT the same, and Michelle Obama’s route is not only the antidote to obesity but the antidote to anorexia as well.  She is a fashion plate, yet not stick thin, and wears herself well despite her height and her hips.  She is also raising daughters in rarified limelight and those girls will be both model tall on their own and under a lot of pressure to be thinner than they should be as they grow older. 

The fact that the author lumps them together - the classist reaction and the right answer - is tellingly ignorant.

I still think this is really about gay designers who want women who look like young men.

I know you’re probably joking, but I’ve known very few young men who look anything like current fashion models.

And I know there are other guys out there like me.  I wonder whether this problem is generated more by women than by men.

Women, and especially young girls, certainly do police each others’ appearance and weight, but in my experience it’s men who are extremely anxious about women’s appetites, whether sexual or culinary.  Many men in our uptight society are extremely turned off by women who have large appetites of any kind and ignoring that is pretty damn insulting to women.  It presumes that we’re too stupid to know what’s what and that we’re crazy—that we don’t see/hear/experience men policing our behavior constantly.

Thin non-curvy women are convenient models for designers, because minimal alteration is needed to fit the stick-thin model, and the designer uses several different models for the shows (and later, trunk shows). There’s a certain amount of laziness among designers.

So what did they do just even 30 years ago?  Were they simply less lazy?

Oh, thanks, Caliban, for the fat-shaming. Fuck off already.

Really? Fat shaming? Just by mentioning the obvious truth that we are a fat nation? That is just reality. There is nothing wrong with being fat or thin if you are in shape. The whole bmi thing is a sad joke as I have known many skinny people who couldn’t run around the block.

... but to suggest that any pleasure taken in food at all is an overindulgence, that eating itself is a disgusting habit that we should abandon completely.

I ran into this attitude today at work. Now that fall/winter is here I’ll be baking a lot more (having given it up over a very hot ((for Seattle)) summer mostly…) and have been bringing in the results to work. I made a cake from the Cake Love cookbook (Chiapas pound cake - TRY IT! It’s great) and emailed around so people knew there was cake. Someone randomly swung by and went into ta lecture about how she doesn’t even cook for herself anymore because she is “done with overeating” and etc. etc. taking a piece of the pound cake in the meantime. Then almost being upset with me that the cake tasted great. “Oh my GOD. This is SO decadent! I can’t have ANY MORE or this for a year!” (It’s not the most intense pound cake in the world - that would be the Corriher rum pound cake I like to make - with roughly 1/2 doz. eggs, whipped cream, etc.) 

I mean - it’s cake. Eat it. Enjoy it. I don’t want to be your confessional or anything. I bake because it’s fun I bring it in because it makes people’s Tuesdays go a bit better. Seriously.

How was it that the standards of the fashionmodeling world have been the ones that the public adopted as it’s beauty standards, as opposed to the body types of other types of celebrities?

I don’t know if that’s necessarily true.  It’s one that gets promoted as a beauty standard, and although I don’t read fashion magazines, one that seems to have traction among some women, but I don’t know how much it actually has as a real impact on society at large.  There’s the common assumption that “skinniness” is related, but I think that may be a reach except insofar as there are a few people unduly influenced by what they think others think is beautiful.

The other thing to bear in mind is that there really isn’t a single beauty standard these days.  The amount of media available gives a lot of variety.  Serena Williams (muscular and solidly built) is as readily visible as any but the most famous fashion models, and even those fashion models everyone knows, as opposed to the nameless ones strutting the runways, tend to be the bigger ones.

it’s cake. Eat it. Enjoy it.

I assume you are already aware of Guinness cake, which has been rightly praised in Pandagon threads before.  Anyone who isn’t should google it posthaste, and replace any mention of “cocoa powder” into “3-4 ounces of the most decadent baking chocolate you can afford.”  I like this cake because it makes the Europeans I have to deal with on a daily basis STFU about how everything in America is “too sweet.”  Which yes, it is, I know, I just get tired of hearing about it.  Seriously, this cake is awesome.

Danica, send this to your coworker: it’s No Fat Talk Week!

http://www.endfattalk.com

And then tell her to have some more cake, already….

I’ve abandoned all fashion publications in favor of art. The attitude is much healthier. I am an artists’ model at age 41, five foot three, 140 pounds, size 12/14. I am by no means their largest model. The arts centers look for strong, flexible people of various ages and sizes to pose for life drawing, anatomy, etc. classes. This is helping me undo a lot of “brain damage” regarding my body that I accumulated over the years.

Similarly the models who make the transition to some other job, like acting.

Except now actresses are getting thinner and thinner and are starting to get that bobble-head, stick body look.

@Danica. The ironic thing about your colleague’s “ta lecture” (and love the grabbing a piece of pound cake while doing it) is that home cooking is probably the best thing you can do. I’m finding that if I stick to cooking from scratch—usually on the weekend and then re-heat during the week—I lose more weight than if I eat any processed food, even a “diet” frozen dinner. Corn syrup and all those other sneaky additives and hormones are probably a big culprit in the current weight gain.

The arts centers look for strong, flexible people of various ages and sizes to pose for life drawing, anatomy, etc. classes.

Oh, for flexible models who can hold an interesting pose!  I hate the guys (and it’s usually the guys) who show up, disrobe, and then just stand there, as if the sight of their junk should be more than enough to wow us.

Ugh, I artist modelled for a while in Seattle, which was AWESOME!  Then I applied to artist model at CWU when I went there to get my BA and was informed in no uncertain terms that I was too fat to be a useful subject. 

I believe my parting words were, “Fuck you, Pig.”

It’s nearly impossible to make sound, informed decisions about your everyday habits when you’re living in a state of constant, extreme, self-induced panic.

This explains the reason I have such difficulty exercising in public. Even if it’s just a walk. Being shut in the house doesn’t motivate me but where else am I supposed to go? Every gym around here has large mirrors and windows so people can constantly inspect themselves and each other. I’ve never seen an overweight person in a gym ad or even in these gyms. They mostly seem like places where already thin people go to get that 10 year old starving Thai kickboxer look. There seem to be two choices. Either a gym where they treat me like I should be ashamed to inflict my appearance on them or a gym where people are overly invested in my weight loss taking it upon themselves to constantly ask my weight. And that’s of course if I can afford either one. Not to mention some form of affordable work out clothes that aren’t ridiculously bulky and patterned sweatpants or ridiculously tight and brightly colored spandex. I constantly feel guilty like I’m doing something wrong to everyone else just because I want and need some exercise outside my house. I know it’s ridiculous but I can’t help feeling, well, ridiculous.

Nick #28: “Sexyness” isn’t a goal of ultra-thin—just the inverse, in fact: Extreme skinnyness as a sign of denial, purity and unobtainability, the “Madonna” to the curvy woman’s “Whore”. Comes all from the same fucked-up place.

Caliban: Just by mentioning the obvious truth that we are a fat nation?

Inhowfar is the fact that the median American is medically defined as overweight relevant to the topic or debate at hand? I think there could be some good class analogy made beween rich/skinny and poor/fat, how the middle has been disappearing and the extremes become ever more so… also, how property and body type are regarded as virtuous or sinful. But “there are a lot of fat people in Tennessee” isn’t going anywhere as an argument and hits a lot of people’s buttons.

Danica: Someone randomly swung by and went into ta lecture about how she doesn’t even cook for herself anymore because she is “done with overeating” and etc. etc. taking a piece of the pound cake in the meantime.

It seems to be standard feminine behaviour that you cannot have cake in the presence of strangers unless you are shouting loudly, “mea culpa, mea culpa” and bang their heads against boards like the Monthy Python Crazy Monks.

re: photoshopping: I read somewhere recently that a women’s magazine was photoshopping the models to “less bony”, probably not to freak out their readers… I can believe it, when I see paparazzi shots of models, they don’t look glamorous. They just look in need of a sandwich.

Except now actresses are getting thinner and thinner and are starting to get that bobble-head, stick body look.

I don’t find that to be necessarily true.  Now there are actresses who are naturally thin (you can tell because although they’re thin, you don’t have joints and ribs poking out), but then there are those who aren’t ungodly thin or starving themselves.  I can list off the top of my head a host of actresses who run the gamut of the not-thin, all are successful and reasonably to very well-known, and all have successful careers and/or shows or movies.

It seems to be standard feminine behaviour that you cannot have cake in the presence of strangers unless you are shouting loudly, “mea culpa, mea culpa” and bang their heads against boards like the Monthy Python Crazy Monks.

it’s No Fat Talk Week!

Oh, a “no fat talk” YEAR (or more!) would be BLISS!!!!  I am sick unto death of all that shame and self-loathing and obsessive talk of food and body shape and such.  How much of women’s energy does that crap siphon off?  How much could we accomplish if we weren’t spending so much time/thought/conversation on our body issues?  I had a girlfriend (lesbians are not immune) who was always worrying about her weight, counting weight-watchers points, complaining if I baked cookies, and worst of all telling me I just “don’t understand” and acting like there’s something wrong with me that I *didn’t* obsess like that (over either my own appearance or hers).  One of the (many) joys I rediscovered after breaking up with her was living my life without having that be a huge focus in my household.

Inge: I think it is easy for us to sit here and debate whether fashion should focus on horribly skinny fashion when in fact for the vast majority of the population it is a non-issue. That is, fat is who they are. The cultural aspect is certainly true, I think, as I moved here from the Amherst/Northampton Mass. area the ratio of obesity was much less; even my kids commented on the vast numbers of heavy people here almost immediately upon moving here- that is how obvious it is. Yet, from what I have read and discussed with people here, it wasn’t always that way. There was great poverty here in eastern TN and people ate primarily what they could grow or purchase cheaply locally. The food was simple but nutritious and not as a whole fattening. Then, cheaper, easier to make and buy food came along- but filled with fattening ingredients to promote fullness- and wham- the obesity rates went up.

And because they are bigger, the people here resent the talk of giving up their SUVs and pick-up trucks and large cars; they really cannot fit into smaller cars. I don’t mean that to be mean but when you are 250-300 lbs., an Aveo is not the car for you. They are addicted to their fast food. There is a barbecue joint in my town that is packed morning, noon, and night; despite the fact that the smallest meal there is no less than 2000 calories. And it has a drive-thru to boot.  I am sure the people here would say you can take away my Big Mac when my hands are cold and dead.

This focus on skinny fashion models is silly in my mind. I will believe that Americans are focused on skinny when I see lots of skinny Americans. And you and I both know that is not going to happen. As long as there is cheap, fattening food while veggeis and fruits and organic foods cost much more, America will be the not be the land o the fat-free. The only people who really care about fashion and fashion models are those who can afford to do so.

“re: photoshopping: I read somewhere recently that a women’s magazine was photoshopping the models to “less bony”, probably not to freak out their readers…”

That seems kind of ridiculous, since all they’d have to do to avoid that would be hire any of the work-starved non-size-0.5 models out there.

Apologize if anyone’s already mentioned this, but I only have time to skim the comments.  See ‘Holy Anorexia’ for a fascinating/horrifying account of this linkage of denying appetites and purity/holiness in medieval and early Renaissance Europe
http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Anorexia-Rudolph-M-Bell/dp/0226042057/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256085748&sr=1-1

What I found particularly interesting was the way in which some of these women used spectacular public starving and self-degradation as a way to get freedom, influence and respect in their societies, it was just about the only way to do so for a women who was not born to the upper class.  The parallels to the way that modelling is often seen by young women as their only possible ticket to wealth and fame kind of leapt out at me.

Every time I see a fourteen-year-old girl with a BMI of 16 worrying that she’s “fat” because her best friend weighs half a pound less than she does, I want to spit in the eye of people like caliban.

Hmmm,  I think the time has come for the fashion industry to fund some cloning and genetic engineering at a molecular biology graduate program near you.  It should be relatively easy to get a C=cup chest, a Raquel Welch cheek bone, the overall proportions of Sudanese lineage, Carly Simon lips, blonder than Uma Thurman…oh and throw in some mouse genes so the poor creature matures in two years.  Why make humans suffer, even the exemplary few in the fashion industry, for the quest to be “perfect”.  Time to admit what we like is not real.

I worked for a fashion mag back in the early 1970s, my first magazine job (no choice in the matter, although I didn’t read women’s magazines, it was difficult then for a woman to get hired as other than a secretary, on any other magazines. As a for instance, Newsweek, Time then refused to hire women writers or editors.)

I was in the production department, so I saw the markings on the photos to be retouched, lopping off the saddlebags on the models’ thighs, erasing all wrinkles, etc.

But if memory serves, never saw them have to erase bones poking out of flesh, or photos that sported clavicles poking out of starved flesh (something I’ve since seen popping out in apparently unretouched magazine ads.)

Remember one of the supermodel’s walking by the office (Cheryl Tiegs?) and she was freakishly tall, but her head actually seemed small for that body, not the reverse. (and facial features small and insignificant in person, without makeup.)

Yeah, there was Twiggy and her ilk in the ‘60s, but a more “healthy” image for models was in fashion in the ‘70s (not surprisingly when a whole new decade of women second wave feminists were hitting the job market and beginning to batter down the doors closed to women in previous decades.)

I’ve been wondering about the progression that led us from the Venus of Willendorf to the new ideal of unrealistic emaciation. Of course there’s a sexist element in all of this, but is it possible that this is less about misogyny than it is about reacting to the unobtainable? At times when food meant pummeling your own mammoth, weight was a sign of success; in cultures where mammoths come pre-pummeled, extreme thinness is a sign of success. In either case, abnormal weight one way or the other can be a mark of affluence.

By its very nature, fashion is a business of falsehoods and costumes, all in service to self-definition. The uncomfortable truth about the fashion industry is it has a knack for tapping into unspoken cultural obsessions and taboos. Fashion sets up a rarefied world of perfection that is, in many ways, defined by how much it differs from the mundane, from the norm. And all indicators suggest that as a culture, we hate what we are becoming: fat.

Yet, oddly enough Ms. Ghivans, women were buying MORE clothes and following trends more closely back when the dimensions of models were closer to those of actual women.  Nowadays, women tend to wear whatever the fuck they want and buy whatever is on the clearance rack at Target, rather than scrutinize the latest trends and try to emulate them.  Most of us view fashion more as a spectator sport than anything that has any relevance to our lives.

Okay, maybe I’m out in the weeds here, but I wonder how much the increasing disparity of models’ thinness to actual women tracks to the globalization of clothing manufacturing.  Last night I watched “Schmatta: Rags To Riches To Rags” on HBO, which was an exploration of the garment industry in the U.S.  The program showed how clothing manufacturing in NYC evolved from sweatshop horror to a unionized bastion of opporunity and then back to sweatshop hell in “developing countries”. 

In addition to the obvious parallels to reactionary religion, could the lionization of this unattainable female form also be analogous to Horatio Algier and other sorts of Gilded Era “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” myths?

preying mantis # 62: I suspect they wanted the skinny body type, but no bones poking out.

The trend towards thinner models might simply be ease of design + selection. The ideal model looks like a clotheshanger, because that shape does put the least restrictions on design. With there being more models than jobs for modeling high fashion, the most clotheshanger-like models get the jobs, and everyone working in high fashion starts to suffer from the same perception twist that someone who has a 16:9 image badly scaled to his 4:3 TV: freakishly thin becomes “how normal people look”.

Alternate theory: to some large extent, the fashion industry has drunk its own koolaid. They can’t tell the difference between being delighted by a woman’s beauty and being shocked by her thinness—actually, they think the shock means they’re seeing beauty—so they’re on a path to thinner and thinner models, and images which are even thinner than the models.

Nick’s being a bit of a pain, but it’s true that the media lie about male sexuality. Why not? They’re lying about everything else.

A big piece of what’s going on with the fear of fat isn’t about wanting to be attractive, it’s about wanting to not be attacked. To some extent, these are counted on separate scales, so that being attractive to some people doesn’t make up for being attacked by other people.

This may be of interest—it’s an essay about men *never* being told they’re beautiful. In the comments (not all of which I’ve read), the point is made that what women get at best isn’t likely a personal expression of delight in their appearance, it’s confirmation that they meet a socially approved type.

The thing that bewilders me about the clothing industry is partly that high fashion exists, but also that there isn’t a parallel fashion for humans industry. Why isn’t there an avidly followed yearly release of intensely desirable clothing that people can actually wear? Why aren’t people who design such clothing famous? Once upon a time, Chanel was famous for designing clothes which were relatively practical.

Is the absence of such these days an inevitable consequence of capitalism and/or sexism, or is it just that no one with the necessary resource has had the inspiration?

I’ve never seen an overweight person in a gym ad or even in these gyms.

I know!  And it’s the same thing with diet ads.  In every commercial for Special K, or any of the numerous brands of light yogurt, it’s always a skinny woman eating the food.  The women in those ads don’t even need to lose weight.  It’s not just advertising a product, but also advertising the attitude that being obsessed is just What You Do(TM), even if you’re already thin or even underweight.

I would just like to mention that there are plenty of gyms out there where there are overweight people.  Maybe the ones you have been going to are on the higher end of the price scale?  I go to Bally’s and have never felt like I was out of place, even when I was 242 pounds, which for my height is well into the obese range.  Even my 300 pound sister and her husband work out there.  There are also plenty of elderly people of all sizes.

Anyway, my point is that if you are actually interested in joining a gym, you should take heart that there it one out there where you wont feel out of place.

I would just like to mention that there are plenty of gyms out there where there are overweight people.  Maybe the ones you have been going to are on the higher end of the price scale

I haven’t checked out the Bally’s around here but I’ve heard it’s the same as all the other gyms. I would go check it out except it’s about a 40 minute train ride followed by a bus ride. So I’d have to pay about $10 just to get to the gym. But I get your point. It is easy to feel trapped between higher end gyms since I live in a small working class surrounded by 4 upper class enclaves. This thread made me rethink this and I brought it up with a friend. She told me she has heard good things about the YMCA that’s near here. So I’ll go check that out.

The obsession with wiping out any traces of humanity from female bodies in the fashion industry reminds me of nothing so much as the obsession with sexual purity that flourishes on the Christian Right. In both cases, anxieties about the dirty biological reality of life are projected onto female bodies, and the solution proposed is an extreme form of control. As fashion designers balk at anything even resembling soft tissue on women’s bodies, some factions of the Christian right are moving towards extreme forms of premarital abstinence that ban even closed-mouth kissing before the wedding. But since the anxieties they’re trying to quash never actually go away, it’s worrisome in both cases to see what the next steps in appetite-denial will be.

Thank you for that. Yes it is like some kind of hideously extreme need for control or purity. The perception of the female form is warped and turned into an inhuman image. Those attracted to the female form will then see normal, healthy women as being grotesque. The women will also consider themselves grotesque, and will look at themselves only with pain. They will tend to want to rectify the reality of their body, and change it into the idealized image that they see.

If perception of the female form is always skewed, then women (the bearers of the female form) and those attracted to the female form, will be always off-balance, always dis-satisfied. In western art and myth, the female form can symbolize the world. If perception of the female form is skewed and unbalanced, then is perception of the world likewise skewed and unbalanced? It wonder if this “wound” in the perception of the female form extends into a wound in the perception of the world itself, that the world is grotesque. I can’t help but think that perceptions of femaleness and of maleness are likely to extend into damn near everything in the human psyche… maybe that is an old-skool way of looking at it.

From Nancy Lebovitz in #72

The thing that bewilders me about the clothing industry is partly that high fashion exists, but also that there isn’t a parallel fashion for humans industry. Why isn’t there an avidly followed yearly release of intensely desirable clothing that people can actually wear? Why aren’t people who design such clothing famous? Once upon a time, Chanel was famous for designing clothes which were relatively practical.

This. I also don’t get this at all, and it alienates me from ‘fashion’ somewhat.

Nancy Lebowitz #72: The thing that bewilders me about the clothing industry is partly that high fashion exists,

Performance art?

but also that there isn’t a parallel fashion for humans industry.

There is. Even seen anyone wearing anything even vaguely similar to these ...things… you see at high fashion shows? It’s just that without the costumes it’s not that much of a circus.

purpleshoes #74: I also believe that plenty of people aren’t lying when they say all the carrot sticks in the world won’t make them thin and we should back the heck off.

Also: Everyone loses weight when they’re starving. The error in the whole setup is the belief that starving is a good thing. So what if she’s eating Linzer Torte instead of carrot sticks? I want everyone to have access to healty food, and enough opportunity to exercise and to relax, and not have every desire to get more exercise or better food fat-shamed out of them, and if they want Linzer Torte, that’s none of my business.

Fat talk rant: I have recently lost some weight after I had finally gotten everyone used to me being fat, and now all the crap is back again, “But you made so good a start, now I want to see you live on nothing but carrots and raw celery because otherwise I’ll feel bad about myself! And you should go to the gym more often! And have you tried [whatever stupid trend sport or diet]?” No, I haven’t, no, I won’t, now FOAD, ktxbye.

On the gyms- it DOES suck that Curves is owned by rightwing twits, and I won’t ever give them my money. I wish I could find another gym like I started going to in my hometown, along with my mom. It was a female-only place, very basic, with women of all shapes and sizes and ages. They had a small childcare area you could book a slot for either a nominal fee per hour, or add an amount to the monthly fee. They offered some yoga and aerobics classes but the main focus was the circuit training, where they gave you two sessions with a personal trainer to learn the machines, write down the settings, and get started on how to tell when you should add a bit of weight or increase reps. My mom and I have never been workout type people but the low pressure atmosphere made it dare I say… fun?

RealistMom, I have gotten ads in the mail and coupon kits for gyms that are targeting typical people.  They offer support, personalized plans, and they have pictures of a wide range of folk using their facilities - ages, builds, weights, etc. and are locally owned.

One is female only, the others are co-ed.  They seem to be multiplying.  Another local gym chain has strict rules about acting like a douche and seeks to maintain an inclusive, no stress atmosphere.  In the worst of winter, when it was dangerous for humans and pets to walk outside, they even posted a still from I am Legend and listed slack hours when you could bring your dog in for a treadmill run!

As for Curves, well, they don’t have weights that go high enough for Female Gorillas such as myself.

If you think your area could support your dream gym, you might find a partner with fitness industry experience and create one yourself.

I do draw a distinction between “only having access to or time for low-quality processed calorie-dense food” and “being a huge foodie and eating fabulously because it’s awesome.” The first is a social justice issue; the second is someone having a great time at life and everyone should shove off.

Yeah, and I think an excellent yardstick for which of these is which is that people who only have access to crappy food usually (get ready for a shocker) feel crappy. They feel crappy if they’re fat and they feel crappy if they’re thin.

Whereas people with access to good food feel, generally, good. Good if they’re fat and healthy, good if they’re thin and healthy.

It would seem to me that we could largely address issues of food scarcity and nutritional problems by dropping the fat panic and focusing on whether people feel shitty or not, but that’s just me and maybe I’m not fat-panicked enough.

Shakahi, I love-love-love my local YMCA.  The diversity even in my lily-white Northwest town looks like a video for We Are The World. 

That said, I used to go to a woman-only gym (now out of business) and the “we’re all wearing our baggy workout gear and sweating - who cares?” vibe was wonderful.

Oh, and let me say that water aerobics rocks.  Sure, getting in/out of the pool isn’t any fun, but the water negates a great deal of the damage that aerobics on land can do (gravity and all that), and no one can see if you’re keeping up or in sync, which is a big help for my uncoordinated self.  It’s a mixed class and a serious workout.

Certain people were so enthused about how Great I Looked now that I had nothing to eat. Made me want to start punching people, yes.

I noticed this at the end of my senior year in high school. All the stress and chaos, caused me to have a constant upset stomach and control issues. I went from a normal sized 5’5” 130lbs to under 110lbs in less than 2 months. Luckily, I had a dance teacher at school who noticed and confronted me. She also gave me an ultimatum. If I didn’t put at least 5lbs on in the next 6 weeks she wasn’t going to let me be in the end of the year performance. After that discussion I went outside to cry. Many girls came up to see what was wrong. When I started telling them how much weight I had lost the reaction was “That’s great. You look great. How did you do it?” I was also lucky enough to have close friends that had noticed and helped me but the image of all those girls, most of them fellow dancers, telling me how great I looked when I had bones jutting out and my skin was grayish still shocks and weighs on my mind now that I’m older.

Certain people were so enthused about how Great I Looked now that I had nothing to eat. Made me want to start punching people, yes.

I have a problem where people remember me as being fatter than I am, and to be fair, the photographic record is not in my favor.  The result is that when I meet people after not seeing them for awhile, they rave about how much weight I’ve lost and how great I look, even if I haven’t lost a single pound, and even if I’ve actually gained weight in the meantime.  Then I actually did lose a few pounds and actually did look and feel quite a bit better, but the compliments still annoyed me.