See the article here.
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There are few things as distressing as watching your child cry because she does not fit societies media fueled perception of beauty. Likewise, there are few things more destructive to the average woman's self esteem as being bombarded with unrealistic comparisons and discriminated against because you don't weight 95 lbs.
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image sourceWhen that 300lb woman is in the grocery store line with a magazine and she is complaining "She is too skinny! They should show real women on these magazines," more than likely it is not a result of your supposed hypothesis. She isn't standing their thinking of how she would like to “bang Brad Pitt.” I will guess that most are not even envious of the models' emaciated body. Rather, she is thinking about how her child refuses to eat in attempt to look like the role models that she has plastered on her wall. Maybe she is venting because beauty has been narrowed to only include those that achieve it by harming themselves or have won a genetic lottery.
While you stand chuckling in Pollyanna land, she is probably thinking about real life. Two out of every 100 teenagers will struggle with an eating disorder. Yet, the message they get from society is that you must be abnormally thin….or you are not beautiful. She is thinking about the hypocrisy in T.V commercials where a stick thin figure is advertising and promoting junk food. Maybe, she stops to think if she only didn't have to work two jobs she would have time to cook healthy meals and exercise more. But, then she fumes again because that would simply leave her average and not like the emaciated or genetically thin figure that she stares at.
Many of these stars are not “working their ass off and hitting the gym” to be so thin that their ribs show and every vein in their body is as translucent as glass. They are not eating, puking, taking laxatives, using epicate syrup, getting weight loss shots, hiring personal trainers to exercise them 5 or 6 hrs a day, being airbrushed in magazines, etc.. All of these are dangerous, physically unrealistic, or not feasible for anyone that doesn't make a living from doing it. So, it's not about changing lifestyles or just being happy with who you are. People are not that simple- and life sure isn't. Telling yourself and your children that it is okay not to look like the magazine is impossible as long as society (like you) tells the world that beauty is X. You can either be happy with not being X, or work to achieve an unobtainable X.
Model Ana Carolina Reston weighed only 88 pounds when she died at age 21. Fashion model Carre Otis admitted her starvation diet still wasn't enough to keep her “thin enough.”
She had to supplement it with diet pills and laxatives. Singer Karen Carpenter died at age 32 weighing 80lbs. Models Luisel and Eliana Ramos literally starved themselves to death. Twenty one year old model Hila Elmalich died after living only on lettuce and diet soda. Boston ballerina Heidi Guenther died at age 22 weighing 93lbs. Ashley Simpson, Nicole Richie, Victoria Beckham, etc… all admit to having/had an eating disorder.
Many like Angelina do not admit to having an eating disorder, but show all the physical signs of having one. For most, it is not possible to weigh 80 lbs like Nichole Richie or even 105 lbs like Angelina. I am 5'10/ 156 lbs and exercise daily, but I will never see my body at 105 pounds without doing it in an unhealthy manner. When we see a picture of these celebrities that are transforming their bodies in unhealthy ways, we might as well be looking at a picture of disease and uncertain death. Yet, when anyone questions or complains about placing these “diseases” on a pedestal, you dismiss it as a jealous fat girl that don't want to “work” to look as “good.”
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Next time you hear someone advocate for “average sized women” to be given a platform, you might want to actually agree and promote something other than unhealthy vanity and name calling like- “chunky butt.” It would encourage a lot more obese people to actually loose weight (in a healthy way) if they had something obtainable which to measure it by.
You may not like to look at a “chunky butt” in spandex, but I assure you that impudence and gadarene thinking are far more repulsing.
Oh PS - none of my men complain. Most of them say they'd rather have meat than bones. So ... HAHA! =] Great article Jo!