One more example for the Chycks, Not Sticks brigade: Brittney Blunt. Craig Sager apparently made an ass of himself during an NBA draft over her appearance. (She was dating Casey Jacobson at the time.)
Aside from the whole "unrealistic body-types oppress women" thing (which is pretty much true, but not my point) there's something screwed up about models all sharing the same highly unusual body type. The point of fashion models is to sell clothes by implying that "If you buy this, it will look this good on you." Toward that end, it makes sense for them to be much prettier than the average, but it really doesn't make sense for them to be far from the average in any other way.
To take myself as an example -- I have a skeleton like an ox. Broad shoulders, big ribcage... even when I was a bone-skinny teenager, I was never little. Looking at a fashion model wear clothes doesn't give me any information about what they would look like on me -- it's not just that the model is prettier than I am, although of course she is, but the clothes that flatter a 5'11" extreme ectomorph don't flatter a 5'7" mesomorph, and vice versa. It makes fashion photography a rather dull and pointless art form, rather than an aid to figuring out what clothing you might want to buy.
The reason it strikes me as sad that a size four girl would be told to lose weight is that very few women can approach that ideal; why do designers design clothes for twelve year old boys? A size four is already thin.
While I agree to some extent that the 'media image' explanation is often offered out of habit, part of the problem, as LB says, is that fashion is designed for a small minority of body types. A floaty slipdress may look breathtaking on a 5'11'', 105 pound model but like hell on a 5'4'' woman who weighs 140 pounds. We end up dieting to fit the styles rather than having the styles flatter what we are.
I'm aware that it's a job. That's why I phrased it that way. You wonder if she sees herself outside the professional role at all. She has to know that her judgment triggers eating disorders, starvation, all sorts of weird behavior, not in the culture at large so much (although there's that), but specifically among the girls she works with. I'm sure it's happened many times that she's said to someone, "You need to be a size 2" and the girl turns around and throws up her next meal. But what really got to me is the you need to "eat right" part, when what she's really saying is you need to not eat. It's dishonest, probably self-protective, on her part. That's why it seemed creepy.
LizardBreath,
The couture stuff only gets bought by really rich people. By the time you get to that stage the Houses know how to flatter you, and they know how to modify the designs to make them look good on 60 year-olds.
Right. You don't get from 'between a 4 and a 6' to 'between a 2 and a 4' by eating sensibly -- you do it by developing an eating disorder. (A certain percentage of models just are that skinny naturally, but nowhere near all of them.)
But it's not just couture models that are that skinny -- catalog models are almost as unusually built.
This post was as well-thought as I am funny.
what really got to me is the you need to "eat right" part
Yeah, agreed, clearly dishonest. And if she were actually concerned, she would have acted differently. But telling a size 4 girl that she needs to be a size 2 is not, by itself, creepy. Models have to be that skinny because clothes themselves look best when there's very little person in them.
Michael, the only reason you're not banned is that, by commenting, you punish yourself more than I ever could.
why do designers design clothes for twelve year old boys?
Look, I'm sick of the hatred here. 11-year-old boys need clothes too, alright? Why, when I wore my Prada sheath dress to the Sixth Grade Prom, all eyes were on me, and not that blue-eye-shadowed cow Jason Macantee. If it hadn't been for haute couture, who knows whether I would have ever been Homecoming Queen?
I am beginning to understand that you do not appreciate my sense of humor.
Models have to be that skinny because clothes themselves look best when there's very little person in them.
This is a conventional statement, but not really true. Some clothes look best on a model body-type, others don't. Styles of clothes that flatter me are often going to look pointless on a model. The fact that all the models are the same type means, as Cala said, that there's a tendency to design to look good on the models who sell the clothes, rather than on the customers who buy them.
Well, I don't know how to settle the chicken-egg question, but I imagine the fashionworld answer is that the clothes that flatter you just don't look as good as clothes, or as art, if you like.
I thought perhaps you were in a bad mood this morning, and I was *trying* to use a bit of humor to get over it. It didn't really occur to me that you could dislike me that much. I entertained the idea of emailing you to ask what the problem was, but, 10 was just so...pompous. Nevermind.
I agree with you about having a different sense of what your body is for when you are athletic, but even so, the effect is limited unless you are truly an athlete. I don't think it's how most women see themselves. Most women still think of their bodies primarily in relation to what size they are and how they appear to others. And it's hard to resist even if you are athletic.
but I imagine the fashionworld answer is that the clothes that flatter you just don't look as good as clothes, or as art, if you like
Which brings us back to "It makes fashion photography a rather dull and pointless art form, rather than an aid to figuring out what clothing you might want to buy." This, in itself, is not importantly oppressive, but it is annoying and stupid.
Fashion modeling isn't about what men find attractive, though, is it? It's about what women think men find attractive.
OK, e'rbody's been making the point that I was going to make better--in basketball (for certain positions) taller is objectively better, because there's a set goal of getting a ball into a hoop and height helps with that. (And will so long as the basket is set high enough to make the game at all challenging.) For fashion, models need to be unreasonably skinny because designers design clothes for unreasonably skinny models.
So I'll add--unreasonable body demands can occur in sports too. Football players are required to bulk up to weights that are objectively unhealthy even if they don't use steroids. Didn't someone have an ESPN column last year proposing a weight limit for football teams?
So I'll just say--the idea that people need to adopt a certain
That last bit is an editing glitch. Michael, I thought 10 was funny. SCMT, which one's Blunt?
Mecha-sheep! The bastards.
Fashion modeling isn't about what men find attractive, though, is it? It's about what women think men find attractive.
Yes to the first, not so much to the second. I think it's more about norms within the fashion industry than about any widespread belief among women that men want extremely tall, skinny women exclusively.
Bastard encore une fois.
fashion photography a rather dull and pointless art form
I'm not sure I get that. I mean, I understand that you might not be interested in clothes as art, but is that all you mean?
The senseless repetition of waifs in tunics does not a vibrant artform make.
Weiner, am I confused? In my indignation that Ogged does not understand the subtle genius of my humor, have I missed his own? Or have I really been snubbed by a snob?
Weiner, am I confused?
This is a question most males ask themselves at a certain point in their lives.
I think "banned" is always a joke here. When actual banning occurs, we speak in hushed tones and use euphemisms like 'passed on'.
Feel free to explain to me that 32 was a joke and that I now look stupid.
The ostensible purpose of fashion photography is as advertising, or for editorial photography as a shopping aid. It's supposed to be helping customers figure out what they want to buy, rather than pleasing the esthetic sensibilities of people with a hobbyist's interest in fashion.
In practice, partially bcause of the consistently weird body-type all the models share, fashion photography works better for hobbyists, who are interested in looking at pretty pictures of clothes, than for customers, who are interested in buying and wearing clothes. As I am a customer rather than a hobbyist, I find this irritating.
Or you could just make me look stupid by getting in ahead of me with a funnier joke. That's a traditional way.
The ostensible purpose of fashion photography is as advertising
Is this true? I'm ignorant here, but I thought that the fashion one sees in runway shows and in Vogue isn't meant to be bought, but serves as a marker for other designers to imitate for the season.
No, Matt, I think it's I that is looking stupid. I've been reading Ogged in "serious tone" such that I forgot another possibility might be open, e.g. "ogged humorously fucking with me tone." These confusing internets. And *I* was upset thinking that Ogged was reading me too maliciously. Sorry, big O. I look forward to buying my first bottle of shaving cream.
Couture is a separate thing, which I know very little about but I think you're right, it's for fashion insiders. Vogue, on the other hand, is sold to consumers who want to dress fashionably.
and 'big O' is a really, really unfortunate nickname.
During an actual banning a proclamation of the banns of bandage are issued forth from on high. Then, in the eyes of ogged, you will be banished from this blog and left to wander the wilderness of Magog - the land of Gog - able only to inscribe your jokes and witticisms as runes upon stones that, sadly, are destined perpetually to be obscured by dense fogs and mists of time.
Welcome to puberty, big Mike.
And let's welcome little Mike, while we're at it.
Or you could go comment at Dr. B's place with the rest of the cool bannees.
by getting in ahead of me with a funnier joke
But in my haste, I was sloppy with my diction. Not very satisfying.
I don't know if I buy the, "it doesn't work except as art" explanation. The photographs clearly look beautiful. To the extent that you want to be the photographed, it's entirely possible you buy the product to be as close to the fetishized model as you can. To that end, the impossibility of ever reaching it works. In fact, I thought that was the standard explanation for the fact of std. advertising.
Matt: she's the one throwing the ball, on her knees.
There are other bannees? And they're cool?
To the extent that you want to be the photographed, it's entirely possible you buy the product to be as close to the fetishized model as you can.
For that to work, they should hire impossibly beautiful models of varying body-types, to give people something reasonable to shoot for. Imagining I was going to look like a fashion model (and I think this is true for most women) is rather like imagining I was going to look like an Afghan hound. Fashion models and I are hardly even the same species.
1. Let's agree that for products pitched to men, the men are often (but not usually) impossible ideals as well.
2. Thus having broadened the scope to men and women, allow me to bring in burgers without fear of seeming a sexist. Pictures of, for example, a BigMac, are also idealized; the BigMac I receive looks nothing like the picture, ever. But if they simply used a picture of the burger I was going to get, I might eat there less often.
I might encourage some of the guys here to go shopping with a non-model woman. In my experience, it is much more frustrating than shopping for myself. It's much easier to find clothes that fit me than any of the girls I have gone with.
Not exactly on topic, but not exactly off, either:
I've always been puzzled by the fact that the power of all these idealized images to shape behavior does not seem to be strong enough to slow down the growth of obesity in general, even as it has contributed to eating disorders among a significant number of people.
I'm not sure if I expressed that very clearly.
Hm. I'd still like to draw a distinction between impossible ideals aimed at women, and impossible ideals aimed at men (or hamburgers). Male models are much prettier than the man on the street, but they're not that far from average in dimension -- a little taller, lower body-fat, but a male model isn't a physical freak in the same way a female model is. You could look at a fairly unattractive woman and say "she's built like a model", meaning that she's an emaciated six-footer. There's nothing similar you could say about a man; male models aren't all that distinct from the general population except in their attractiveness. I'm not complaining about models because they're too pretty, I'm complaining because they're too weird.
Thanks, Michael, we'll all stop shopping with models now.
Hey, Otis Redding was nicknamed the Big O. You will have to take my word for it that that is not uncool.
Oscar Robertson was the also nicknamed the Big O, and he's in the conversation as possibly the greatest basketball player of all time.
53- You could say the dieting mentality, in some ways, is what causes obesity. This whole French woman model of maintaining your weight is built on that theory.
Actually eb, you're on topic if the original post can be said to be the topic. The main thing I was getting at is that the images don't have as much power as we attribute to them, and using vs. not using our bodies is the root cause, if you will, of our satisfaction/dissatisfaction with them.
ogged, I think your point may be true for people (both men and women) who are (or were) serious about athletics, but I'm not sure if it holds broadly.
I do think that's right -- that people who use their bodies are much more likely to be contented with them. My one brief fling with athleticism (was entirely unathletic in adolescence, rowed crew in college) did wonders for my physical self-esteem: I went from thinking of myself as a klutz to thinking of myself as a big strong person (who occasionally walks into doorframes).
You might also think that, if someone internalizes an ideal that they obviously can never aspire to, they may move to the opposite end or just not make an effort to reach more reasonable goals.
I should have said "non-model-shaped." I could simply have said, "try shopping with a woman" but that implies that no woman has ever liked you enough for you to have ended up at a clothing store with her. I thought the first way to be kinder, and you really shouldn't worry that I'd think you were out with models.
I went from thinking of myself as a klutz to thinking of myself as a big strong person (who occasionally walks into doorframes)...
...to show them who's boss.
Anyway, I think a lot of the worry about the body-image problem is how it applies to teens and young adult girls, not mature adults. Mature adults are much more likely to make healthy decisions, whereas the young girls are both more impressionable and more likely to be reading all those dumb magazines.
Hey, a good friend of mine, also not the world's most graceful, had a collision with a parked car while jogging, and dented it severely. She was kind of proud of herself.
just not make an effort to reach more reasonable goals.
This makes more sense to me than the argument that people go in the opposite direction. I suspect a lot of people see the images, think "that's not me", and don't do much about it. Meanwhile, their lifestyles, if they aren't very active, lead them to grow more out of shape.
had a collision with
You misspelled "ran into".
You might also think that, if someone internalizes an ideal that they obviously can never aspire to, they may move to the opposite end or just not make an effort to reach more reasonable goals.
Yeah, this is a really good point. The unreasonable ideals make a lot of people give up before they even begin. I think this is behind a lot of people quitting their exercise regimens. ...two months I'm still not ripped, I quit...
I agree with #61. For the World Cup champion Chastain, having a powerful muscular body (and the fact that she is also very pretty) probably offsets the fact that she's not a standard model body type. (And that said, it's only the prettier female athletes held up as examples.)
For the average fit girl? Maybe runs a few miles a day, maybe does some weighttraining, enjoys sports. She may take pride in her strength, but when all's said and done it's hard to find clothes that fit muscles, too. So she still doesn't look as good as she could if the designs were reasonable for anyone over 100 lbs.
The average weight of a model is 23% lower than that of an average woman; 20 years ago, the differential was only 8%
You know, I could hardly believe this post when I read it.
I would like to suggest that the idea that clothes designed for women who actually, you know, exist in the real world would not look good as clothes, and the idea that such clothes would look good as art, are both (1) completely separable and (2) false on their faces.
It just occurred to me, maybe fashion photography should be considered some kind of abstract, non-representational art form.
Why didn't you just second comment 8?
That might be true, Ben, I really don't know enough to say; but I think I've heard the contention made that clothes look best on very tall & skinny bodies. That's not really the heart of the post though, so I'm not sure I follow your transition from sentence one to sentence two.
such clothes would not look good or function as art, that is.
77: re the transition, there wasn't really meant to be one.
There's also an emotional issue, and this gets into more "all women are oppressed by fashion photography" territory. Even though it's entirely silly to feel this way, models and actresses form a norm of 'what pretty women look like' in our culture. If what we see in pictures and on TV and in the movies is the norm, then all ordinary women are lumbering oxen -- it's not so much that they're impossibly pretty, but they are impossibly slender and delicate, and so most ordinary women have, on some level, a nagging feeling that they're just too damn big.
This is where all the stereotypical "Honey, does this make me look fat" from reasonably slim attractive women comes from -- they're measuring themselves against freaks. And I think it also leads to a generalized dislike of their bodies for a lot of women -- they simply can't measure up to the 'objective standard' set by models, so they don't want to think about their bodies at all.
So you couldn't believe how wonderful the post was, or what?
I think there error is here:
clothes look best
What understanding of "best"? I would say that obviously whoever made that statement was begging the question, determining the standard by appealing to the standard (popular) form.
Is there a difference in proportion between taller women and shorter women? (e.g., longer torso?) Because if that's so, it could explain why taller women would be better models -- more inches for a defined waist.
Yeah, 80 is, in my experience, totally true. Again, I do think people tend to get over that as they realize that their bodies are good in other ways, but it's definitely something to be gotten over; the images do have power.
Is there a difference in proportion between taller women and shorter women?
I think the relevant question is whether there's a difference in proportion between models and other women.
And, really, if you're going to design the clothes that "look best on very tall and skinny bodies", that's great, but then everyone should acknowledge that, essentially, these are not clothes for wearing—it's pure/autonomous fashion. Someone else can then get down to the business of designing clothes that will look decent on a normal human frame, a task which is, surely, not impossible.
Anyway, ogged, aren't you a tall, skinny man who on that very account has difficulty buying pants that don't look ridiculous?
By the way, I totally don't understand why, even if there are good reasons for runway clothes and models to look the way they do, the clothes that are actually available still don't fit anyone properly.
re #84: Gawd you're a slut. (I mean "friendly.") That is exactly the opposite of what you've been arguing.
No, actually it's not; it's a different dimension that I should have addressed. Even the strong women I know, while they don't want to be thin reeds, do feel in some ways like being big and strong makes them "lumbering" (I've heard the very word from a few people, in fact).
Anyway, I think we should all feel free to change our mind dozens of times about any issue. That's the point of discussing, right?
I think the statistic Michael quoted above is pretty interesting. I think it's transparently true that the societal norm for an attractive woman is one of thinness, though not to the freakish extent practiced on runways, and one would also expect that couture models would be expected to be among the most attractive women going (because they're modelling the self-styled most fashionable clothes going, and fashionable clothes deserve fashionable bodies, doncha know). But that doesn't explain why the average model would have gotten so much skinnier than the average woman (unless the average woman has just gotten much fatter, and the models have held steady—some of both but who knows what the proportion is?).
It's as if there were rampant nihilism with respect to physical attractiveness, and one of the few objective measures available was latched on to to provide the answer, and focused on to the exclusion of sanity.
OK, this will be good practice for the reading group. Explain to me, in small words, how
The main thing I was getting at is that the images don't have as much power as we attribute to them, and using vs. not using our bodies is the root cause, if you will, of our satisfaction/dissatisfaction with them.
is not contra
Again, I do think people tend to get over that as they realize that their bodies are good in other ways, but it's definitely something to be gotten over; the images do have power.
in tone if not meaning?
Should I get all pedagogical on your ass and tell you that if you read them again carefully, you'll see it for yourself?
I think "as they realize their bodies are good in other ways" is a bit of a red herring. Yeah, your body is good in such-and-such a way, and you're justly proud of it: but you want it to be good in thus-and-so a way as well, and the external influences which have pervaded your sensorium since birth caused you to develop in such a way that you believe you cannot achieve both.
Here:
don't have as much power as we attribute to them ≠ "no power."
And...
the images do have power ≠ [are] the root cause...of our satisfaction/dissatisfaction with [our bodies]
I know lots of athletes and modern dancers, whose bodies are quite useful; I would say in my experience that though there is a positive effect in terms of body-image, it is not powerful enough to overcome the effects of the imagined ideal. Exercise often becomes an obsessive way to be skinnier, for women.
re 95, well, you can't achieve both. You can't be both strong and healthy and a 110 pound 6 footer.
Ok, I'm coming around to SCMT's 61 and ac's 97. The athletic effect might be more narrow than I thought.
Re: 96
Which is why I said "tone if not meaning." In some ways you are arguing about the weight given to various factors which all agree play a part. LB restated the argument against which you were arguing without indicating that she agreed with your weights, and you agreed. So, to me, it reads like you are being inconsistent about the weights you attribute to the two factors as regards "satisfaction."
Am I allowed to agree with you, or will you call me a slut again?
I just didn't address the "weighting" issue in 84; I agreed with her that the phenomenon she described was one that I had seen. I can see why it looks inconsistent.
I don't know; I never considered that a possibility.
103 to 101. But 102 makes sense. I retract "slut" and substitute "fuckwit."
You really are in love with me you know. Please don't propose in the comments.
I am merely playing a slow game to get to FL through you. Or PG. Whichever.
In 80, LizardBreath talks about the feeling of being lumbering, but I find this funny. Maybe it's because I'm 5'3", 120lb and have very small shoulders. The ideal is tall--Julia Roberts, Uma Thurman, not really petite me.
We've discusssed this before, Abby, Julia Roberts is not an ideal.
Isn't that part of the problem, Abby -- it's not a no-win situation, because there are some very small number of women who can be both tall and ethereally delicate at the same time, but it's almost a no-win. If you're little, you're too small. If you're tall, you're too big and coarse. The fashion model/actress ideal isn't one point within the ordinary range of variation, it's way outside it.
In some perverse way, it's fair -- everyone can feel inferior.
Heck, I'm short: 5'4'', in good shape, and I can feel huge and lumbering if I compare myself to some of these actresses.
LizarrdBreath--the only time I felt really great about my size was when I was in high school. I was pretty scrawny--never more than 105lb, 95lbs for most of it, and my freshman year I only weighed 85lb, and the crew team wanted me very badly!
I'm sorry I missed this thread, since I enjoyed the post.
Fashion modeling isn't about what men find attractive, though, is it? It's about what women think men find attractive.
Considering who controls the Fashion industry, it's more likely what gay men think is attractive on women. IMO, "Queer Eye" evens the score so that both men and women can try to dress to please gay men.
And Jenny Finch wears WAY too much makeup.
I agree with 95. Sure, it's great to have a strong, capable body, but it's not a substitute for feeling sexually attractive. I feel good after yoga, and I often feel better about the way my body looks, but I would not be able to maintain sexual self esteem without being told I was hott by a MOS. Athletic achievement is one element of a good body image, but not all of it. Further, not everyone is athletic, and there ought to be a route to feeling positive about your body without being particularly capable in a sport. I know exercise is important for health, but for some people, it will never be anything but taking their vitamins.
I also think the haute couture model type gets conflated with the catalog model/Hollywood actress/cover girl type. Most women striding down a runway don't look good to me, and it does not occur to me to judge myself in comparison to them. That's because they're supposed to look freakish, ethereal, wraith like; it's part of the aesthetic. However, model x for Victoria's Secret looks much more accessible; that's who's really selling the sexuality that would require so much aspirational surgery/gym time/laser hair removal/magical real world airbrushing services to achieve.
Oh, yeah, and every dancer I have ever known is a counterexample to this claim:
When people are in shape, and using their bodies, and making their bodies graceful or strong, they stop caring about whether their body looks like X, and start thinking in terms of what it can do, and with how much alacrity.
Yeah, dancers generally have some pretty serious body image issues. But, in this respect, dancing is more like modeling than like sports: part of the point is to display the body--it's no surprise that they get neurotic about it.
Great discussion...I'm really enjoying what everyone's saying here. I'd be interested in what people think about this: I recall a theory or two (and I'm paraphrasing from memory here) that attributes, at least in part, the overly-thin female body ideal's appeal to male preference for non-threatening female body types. E.g., your average female model could be described as being half-woman/half-child. Half-woman with a come hither look, big sexy hair, large breasts, etc. Half-child with gangly limbs, no body hair, no hips, very little body fat, etc.
I'd like to expand on Ogged's primary point; that most men do not find models attractive. I certainly agree with this. I think that supermodel has become a word that, in sitcom situations and so on, does not mean literally a couture model but rather means an attractive woman ala the prettiest TV and movie actresses.
As such, while I couldn't care less about blaming Vogue and friends for the various ills of teenage girls, I think people need to get their act together about blaming men by saying that "men" force this unrealistic standard on women. If any teenage girl took the time to ask men of any age what they find most attractive, they're far more likely to answer something like Katie Holmes than Giselle. And while Ms Holmes has a more attractive face than the average girl, it's not like their bodies are vastly different (or if they are, it's because the girl is too heavy, not because Ms Holmes is too thin).
I'm not even sure that "the media" are in on the act; I don't see evidence of unhealthy thinness in the actual actresses one sees on TV and in movies. Sure Callista Flockart was insane, and was frequently ridiculed for being such. Mary Kate and Ashley are not on TV right now, and aren't going to be until they stop looking repulsive. "The Media" in this case seems to refer specifically to a few women's magazines.
To the extent that "the media" are guilty of anything, it's of pushing larger than average boobs for a thin woman, and thereby encouraging boob jobs. That's probably a bad thing, but it's not the supposed epidemic of anorexia and bulimia that people go on about.
Katie Holmes is 5'8" and 108 or 118 or 123 lbs. (assuming the infallibility of Google). That may be a natural weight for her, and for people who share a lot of genetic material with Ogged--not that I'm saying that Ogged is Katie's long-lost Iranian cousin, it would be extremely uncool to reveal that--but I reckon that for most 5'8" women 108 lbs. would be an unhealthy target weight.
In response to this crisis, I resolve to masturbate in the future only to photographs of relatively hefty models.
re: 118
Your body can look a lot different from Katie Holmes's before you're overweight. As a matter of fact, you're kind of doing in your comment exactly what it is you say men aren't guilty of. That you can say so offhandedly that KH is a normal size that everyone should aspire to indicates, I think, how pervasive the thin ideal is (which is not to say that KH isn't healthy for her body type; I don't know whether she is or not). You go on to say you don't see unhealthy thinness in the actresses on TV. Most TV/movie actresses are not anorexic; it's true. However, they skew very thin, and most of them go to a lot of effort to maintain their low weight that exceeds the bounds of "healthy". For most women to achieve the look of a Hollywood actress, they would have to spend a lot of time in the gym and restrict their eating in unnatural ways, which may fall short of anorexia, but do not qualify as healthy (nor would be economically feasible for most women). Healthy is getting regular exercise, eating a variety of relatively unprocessed foods, and responding to your body when its hungry.
I personally am 5'7" and 155 lbs. I look a lot different than KH; I am not overweight. In fact, some rather clueless men often guess my weight at 115-135, because they can't differentiate between "her body looks good" and "she is skinny." Of course it's silly to blame men for anorexia/bulimia; perhaps a better term would be "patriarchal culture," which women certainly contribute to as much as men. As for not blaming Vogue etc., um, while the psychological reasons why an individual has an eating disorder are complex and manifold, they're getting the idea from somewhere. Anorexia and bulimia don't arise spontaneously in cultures with no thin ideal (or if they do, it's very, very rare).
Also, I think Calista Flockhart was actually just a very small person, not anorexic, and the fact that *she* got so picked on, rather than all the women who actually were severely restricting their eating, revealed something about Hollywood's neuroses.
Athletic guys tend not to be attracted to athletic women because their legs are not slender. That would make things better for us unathletic guys, except that athletic women tend to be attracted to athletic guys. The Williams sisters look fantastic, especially in movement, but I kind of think I'm not their type.
Not all athletic women have bit legs; depends on the sport.
I was just talking a couple of days ago with a friend about about how ugly and unattractive the Williams sisters are, and how nobody says so, for fear of sounding racist. I guess not everyone shares our taste.
Wasn't one of the Williams kind of a jerk about France? As in, completely insulted the country's foreign policy and then it was a BIG SCANDAL when the French Open crowds cheered--between points!--for her opponent. I don't understand tennis. But what I'm trying to say is, no great loss for you.
Williamses, or Williams sisters.
Most TV/movie actresses are not anorexic; it's true. However, they skew very thin, and most of them go to a lot of effort to maintain their low weight
Very true. This is obvious if you see them in real life, because the camera really does add the appearance of extra weight--to look "good" in photos or on TV, you have to be very very thin. Most of the people you see in the media have rigorous and often bizarre regimens to maintain their bodies.
This isn't exactly on topic, but worth noting: just after the Olympics, I saw an issue of some "Health" magazine at the newstand, and on the cover was a model in a bikini. Having just watched real female athletes, she struck me as scrawny and weak; in a different year, she probably would have looked good to me.
So athletic women from the feebler sports are attractive?
I'd guess that almost all athletic women end up with non-model legs. HS athletes do get picked for modeling jobs, but my bet is that if they continue training they lose their model figures.
Alternatively, there's still a lot of room in women's sports for women who are willing to do weight training and look awful.
Ice skating and gymnastics are completely corrupted by the mix of athletic and artistic standards (combined with subjective judging). The TV audiences tend to go for the more winsome, princesslike ones, and TV pays the bills.
And then there the hot tennis players and golfresses who never win a single tournament?
Feebler sports? I was thinking of milers, pole vaulters, tennis players (Sharapova is both hot and good), and some others that aren't popping into my mind. Not feeble. Take a look here.
Milers end up flat chested though. And yeah, tennis is sort of a feeble sport so far. Maybe the modelling agencies control the coaches. (I do know of a girl, true story, who was cut from her HS volleyball team because she was hefty and not very pretty. She was one of the best players on her team and coaches from other schools recruited her then. So it really can happen).
Sharapova is unique. I also think that the Williams sisters' greater strength made up for the fact that they didn't have the intensive coaching and competition in their childhood that most of the others did. They make the other players look feeble.
I now have no idea if we're arguing about something.
I think that we're chatting about hefty vs. non-hefty women in sports and elsewhere. Maybe some one can toss up a topic.
Alternatively, I will posit that the reason women's tennis is a feeble sport is that the talent pool is still restricted (middle class westerners plus middle class Eastern Europeans) and that if the talent pool ever expands, some heftier tennis players (eg. the Wms. srs.) will dominate. And the slender-legged athletic women categories will be reduced by one.
Doesn't that require, though, a correlation between income and hefty thigh tendency? I can accept a correlation between income and obesity but 'heftiness' seems a bit of a stretch.
At the top levels of the sport, though, I'd imagine some of the reason some sports are heftier than others is that the sport favors a certain body type. Elite female figure skaters tend to be under 5'5'' and are usually kept to strict diets partially to make it easier to land jumps. Gymnasts are even shorter, because they train so hard their bodies forget to grow, plus, little gymnasts flip better. (Gymnastics is subjective but doesn't have an artistic component.) A girl who is tall and excellent at gymnastics won't have much of a chance of getting to the Olympics (and may be pushed into diving instead.) A short girl probably doesn't make it into college basketball.
Distance runners are wiry. Shotputters have more muscle mass in their upper bodies. Sprinters have huge legs. Swimmers, strong shoulders.
Point is, I think it's probably more something to do with tennis and the training regimens rather than about the restricted talent pool.
(Although Davenport seems heftier than the rest.)
Did you see this? I just noticed a news item saying that Israel is going to make it illegal to hire anorexic models.
Huh, interesting. I don't want any laws passed, of course (this is still America, right?) but I'd be more favorably disposed to an agency that voluntarily didn't use "anorexic" models. (What do you make of the BMI of 7 claim? Is that even possible?)
When they get close to killing themselves, maybe. But really have no idea. I doubt I'd be in favor of too much regulation either, but it's interesting that it's taken that seriously as an issue.
The article makes it sound like anorexia is the big problem they're trying to combat, when it seems more general than that.
