Tuesday, February 27, 2007

On a lighter note

I figured I'd lighten things up a bit. I was watching the Oscars last night, and noticed an odd trend. When did all of the actresses become stick figures? I mean seriously, they were attractive to begin with. What on earth convinced them that they all needed to drop whatever shape they had and become the same twiggish shape as everyone else.

I got into an argument with my sister over this. Yes, Americans as a whole are overweight, but models and actresses are underweight. If you are not small statured by nature (e.g. over 5'5'') YOU SHOULD NOT BE A SIZE 0. If you have to refrain from eating solids to maintain your current weight, that is not healthy for you. A couple of the actresses had some nice tone in their arms, but the majority lost most of theirs because their bodies needed a source of energy. I'm all for getting healthier and fit, but dropping sizes so that your body begins to resemble a frail board is ridiculous. No wonder young girls have such bad self-esteem issues....

2 comments:

Benjamin Pollack said...

Unfortunately, I think that the trend towards skeleton-thin models started a long time ago, and is a self-perpetuating problem. If you go back to images in the 1950s, models were well-fed and curvy--not fat, but healthy, normal women. As you move forward, you can see a gradual yet continuous movement towards thinner and thinner models. I think that we actually peaked in the late 90s; I don't think that models nowadays are particularly worse than they were when I was a freshman in high school.

One of the weird things about trying to change this stereotype is you actually need women you can label as sex objects so that you have a decent role-model for being highly attractive and still eating food, but, by and large, objectified women get that way by adhering to the norm. So, again, I'm not sure how you can easily respond to this.

One solution, which I'm personally in favor for, is the Fat Pump. Basically, I envision all adults having a backpack which is filled to the brim with pasty butter. An IV that doubles as a cholesterol meter will run from the backpack to your wrist. Whenever the IV detects that your cholesterol is too low, raw butter will be injected directly into your blood stream. If we make this system federally mandated, the problem with anorexia basically ought to disappear.

Bela Naomi said...

haha I like the fat IV. but really, if it senses you're low, can't you at least enjoy the intake, and have a piece of cake?! =)