issues about body image

You and Ecilam have a lot in common.

 

Queen Latifa and Nikki Blonsky aren't NORMAL. They are obese. Maybe you should say it's nice that obese women have other obese women to look up to.

 

Obese almost IS normal these days.

 

Notice, that I referred to Tyra Banks. I don't know who Nikki Blonsky is, but if she is obese, that's not what I was referring to. I just mean normal. Not a weight lifter, not obese, and not a 5'9" runway model either.

 

Marlyn Monroe would be considered fat by today's standards.

 

Bloated.

 

nikki blonsky is not obese she is outside of the box and an excellent role model for someone her weight to be in hollywood.. plus shes got a lifetime movie coming out this weekend

 

Clinically speaking, Nikki Blonsky is obese. Judging by her pictures, I'm estimating her height to be around 5'3" to 5'4", and her weight fluctuating between 175 and 190. According to the BMI chart on WebMD (which is used by doctors and health facilities across the country), she falls squarely into the obese category with a score of 30.

She may be "normal" or "average", but however you want to describe her, she is not healthy.

 

I think being significantly underweight is unhealthy - especially if you are maintaining that weight by vomiting, exercising to extreme and eating minute portions. Plus, it's painful to live with.

Hasbeens - do you know about reformed smokers? .

 

Arguing the relative merits of our various ideas of physical beauty is pointless. What matters here, IMHO, is that girls & women are under incredible pressure to conform to a grossly unrealistic & narrow definition of "beauty." Our looks are made to seem far too important to our value as persons. And the so-called "ideal" is unattainable by the vast majority of real human females. The pressure was intense long ago, when I was growing up, & it continues to increase exponentially with our massive bombardment of media images. Honestly, I don't think you males have a clue how intense this pressure is. If you have a daughter or care about any female growing up in this culture, you ought to be concerned. Even aside from both the physical & mental health issues, it can be painful to constantly fall short of some arbitrary standard.

In researching this, I stumbled across this new website: http://www.tbio.org/. Some statistics cited there:

Body Image:
o Eighty percent of 10-year-old American girls diet. The number one magic wish for young girls age 11-17 is to be thinner. (justthink.org)
o Females cite the media as the most important source of pressure to be thin.(If Looks Could Kill, Reaves)
o Studies show that reading “teen magazines” and having exposure to thin models creates lower self esteem, body dissatisfaction, decreased confidence and potential eating disorder symptoms (mediafamily.org)
o By age 13, approximately 53% of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies”. This number will increase to 78% once girls reach 17 years of age. (National Institute on Media and the Family)

Advertising:
Key points from Killing us Softly, Kilbourne
o In addition to products, advertising attempts to sell women the myth that they can, and should, achieve physical perfection to have value in our culture.
o As advertising pushes its objects, it turns women’s bodies into objects, often dismembering them with excessive focus on just one part of the body to sell a product.
o Advertisers themselves acknowledge that they sell more than products, that the images in advertising are designed to affect the way we see our lives.
o Men and women inhabit very different worlds. Men’s bodies are not routinely scrutinized, criticized and judged in the way that women’s bodies are.
o Media images of female beauty influence everyone. They influence how women feel about themselves, and they influence how men feel about the real women in their lives.
o Little girls and teenagers are increasingly sexualized in advertisements. A growing number of ads are reminiscent of child pornography.
o Advertising is not solely to blame for rigid gender roles. However, there is no aspect of our culture that is as pervasive and persuasive as advertising.

I like the premise of this site:

"Turn Beauty Inside Out (TBIO) - a grassroots celebration of media images that promote healthy behavior for girls and boys- was created by a group of girls ages 8-16 to invite people everywhere to join us in celebrating Inner Beauty - the beauty of conviction, caring and action. Girls and boys (not to speak of women and men) need a definition of beauty that focuses on who they are and what they do, not on how they look.
TBIO is a counterbalance to the damaging and unhealthy messages about beauty that bombard us all through media, film, advertising and music every day. The funds we raise allow girls internationally to celebrate their inner beauty and work to increase awareness in the general public about the effects of media messages."