Posted on 01/31/2003 5:22:56 AM PST by SJackson
It may be the ultimate weight-loss plan.
No diet, no exercise, no surgery, no pills. Just a little digital wizardry. Point and click here, point and click there, and unwanted pounds melt magically away - from your photographed image, that is.
This is what the British edition of GQ magazine recently did, altering photographs of actress Kate Winslet - without her knowledge or permission, she says - to give her that svelte look common to heroin addicts and supermodels. Winslet has responded angrily. "This is me," she says. "Like it or lump it. ... I'm not a twig, and I refuse to be one. I'm happy with the way I am."
Let the church say amen.
Winslet, it should be pointed out, is not what we delicately describe as a "plus-size woman." She's just a woman with womanly curves, some of which she displayed quite openly in her star-making turn as Rose in "Titanic."
I wish I had a convenient theory for when and why womanly curves became a bad thing, wish I could explain our fascination with a kind of woman who does not, as a rule, exist in nature: Stick legs, sunken cheeks, waist in to here, chest out to there.
It was not always thus. I mean, by those standards, sex symbols of an earlier era would never have heard the first wolf whistle. Marilyn Monroe was not, after all, a beanpole. And that famous pinup of Betty Grable, which, we are told, inspired the GIs to go out and win World War II, did not show a woman who had missed many meals.
By contrast, a 1997 Psychology Today article reported on a researcher who had quantified the fact that Playboy centerfolds and Miss America contestants - purported icons of feminine physical perfection - had been getting skinnier over the years.
Our perception of beauty has changed. And if you're wondering why that matters, it's because our girls are watching. Watching and learning from all this how it is they should be. Much of what they have learned has proved dangerous if not deadly to body and spirit.
Approximately 5 million to 10 million women and girls (and 1 million boys and men) suffer from eating disorders - primarily anorexia and bulimia - which are sometimes fatal. That same Psychology Today recounted the results of a body image survey of 4,000 women and men. Almost 90 percent of the women wanted to lose weight.
Score one for pop culture. I mean, one of its primary functions is to make us dissatisfied with what we are, make us want what it is selling. Right now, it's selling the canard that the average supermodel's body is achievable or even desirable for the average girl. And girls are getting sick, even dying, as a result.
There are those feminists who would argue that the solution is for men to stop objectifying women, but their reasoning flies in the face of human nature. If somebody hadn't objectified somebody else, none of us would be here to argue about it. And anyone who doesn't think women fantasize about a masculine ideal has never seen a soap opera or romance novel.
I'm not out to stop - as if I could! - the endless mating dance of male and female. I'd just like to see something done to protect our girls and women from its more insidious effects.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Dawn Wells is (was?) just right.
As do I. But there is no multi-billion dollar industry whose sole purpose is to turn the too-thin chicks into fat chicks.
This would be true if and only if the paradigm for women buying clothes was stripped down so much it no longer resembled reality. Do you dispute the notion that many women, especially the upscale, haute-couture sect, buy clothes they may not intrinsically like just to have whatever's the hottest, latest, most trend-setting fashion of the moment?Do you dispute the notion that part of what fuels the fashion industry is the desire of women with great disposable incomes to have the latest and greatest and most cutting-edge?
Do you dispute the notion that fashion eventually trickles down through the economic classes, albeit redesigned from the extreme just so much that it's slightly more in tune with the less-radical tastes and sensibilities of the Great Unwashed?
Do you dispute the notion that the Great Unwashed wants to appear like or feel like it isn't the Great Unwashed?
Contrast this with the homosexual inspired male clothing that you see in GQ, Maxxim et. al. How many straight guys do YOU see (outside of NYC, LA, and SF) walking around in things like leather pants and shirts with ruffles? Even in NYC it's not THAT common. Straight men (generally) don't like wearing those types of clothes.
Homosexuals and women have similar taste in clothing. How many guys can attest to their girlfriends/wives coaxing them in to wearing more outlandish and/or exotic fare? The way homo designers design clothing and their attraction to men have nothing to do with one another.
These two paragraphs do more for my point than yours. The great majority of American men are not homosexual and don't want to appear as such, and that's precisely why men don't respond to the fashion industry the way women do.
Yes there is. McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell..... That and the television industry.
My husband has held the same theory for years, and I have always thought there was something to it.
Yes, I do that notion. I never had a woman tell me, "I hate this, but it is so in right now..."
Do you dispute the notion that part of what fuels the fashion industry is the desire of women with great disposable incomes to have the latest and greatest and most cutting-edge?
Yes, I do dispute that notion. Women (in general) just want to look nice. Those with great disposable incomes (at least the ones I know) really do not know what they want.
Do you dispute the notion that fashion eventually trickles down through the economic classes, albeit redesigned from the extreme just so much that it's slightly more in tune with the less-radical tastes and sensibilities of the Great Unwashed?
I do know that fashion trends trickle down. I don't really know what what your getting at here.
I don't understand your usage of the "Great Unwashed". Almost all people in the U.S. wash regularly. Are you using the term to refer to "the masses" It's hard to pin down "the masses" in this country. The middle class is too big.
These two paragraphs do more for my point than yours. The great majority of American men are not homosexual and don't want to appear as such, and that's precisely why men don't respond to the fashion industry the way women do.
From this you seem to be saying women DO want to appear homosexual....
I'm not sure where we're heading with this here. My point is homosexual clothing designers do not want women to look like boys. They just design clothing women might find attractive. Since their thoughts are more feminine, their designs are more feminine. Women are attracted to the feminine clothing. Guys, not being feminine (for the most part) are not attracted to similar clothing.
What is your point in short? That homosexual designers DO want women to look like little boys?
Oh, btw, are you a lawyer?
Ginger was not bad looking but in keeping with this thread's theme, Mary Ann was skinny where she needed to be and more importantly, fat where it counts.
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