Asymmetrical Information

Via Hit&Run I found this quote, from this post:

Given that skinny women are hopelessly manipulated by the fashion industry, and that obese women are hopelessly manipulated by the food industry, I propose the following magic-bullet legislation:

The government buy every obese person subscriptions to the top fashion magazines; meanwhile every skinny person should be forced to sit through a dozen McDonalds, sugary cereal, and Hostess cupcake commercials.

In six months, we'll all wear the same size, and everyone will finally be equal.

I don't understand why you completely ignored some of the other variables in the "skinny/healthy" (definitely not always an inverse relationship) equation. For example, I know many girls who have very attractive (in the contemporary Western view, i.e. skinny with but not starved, as to have no chest/rump fat) figures that they maintain by eating a healthy diet and ~30 min/day of exercise (cardio/small weights) 6 days/week.

Sure, fast food and fatty/caloric snacks are occasional indulgences (if that) but that seems healthy to me, not "obsessive-compulsive" or anything like that.

The keys are to "trick" your evolutionary tendencies (high fat/calories GOOD for long/short term energy storage, therefore taste good while salad without dressing is yucky) and getting into a solid exercise habit that may even seem a bit "obsessive" when viewed by a 2nd party. But after 1 year of this experiment in self-discipline you will feel appreciably better about yourself. There are also plenty of ways to facilitate the aforementioned "tricks", like eating fat-free plain yogurt with fruit in uncooked oatmeal for breakfast (fruit sugars are much better than refined corn syrup anyway) and a cucmumber, egg-white, and lettuce salad with lemon instead of dessert at lunch/dinner.

Anyway, I think at the very least, if we have to choose between 2 radically different body types (husky or skinny) for models skinny is better, especially when a "healthy skinny" is truly attainable for 85-90% of the population (some w/more work than others). Is it a negative-sum game? Now that's arguable, but I might argue "no" - happiness is up and depression down with daily exercise, maybe endorphin effect, maybe feeling of accomplishment/hard work, but it is better than "lazy is OK".

we have an obesity epidemic that leads to all sorts of health problems for folk. so why are you worried about models who are skinny? clearly skinny models aren't keeping americans lean. as for whether the models have eating disorders, occupational hazard (and likely less of a hazard than the damage many professional athletes suffer over their careers, injuries to loggers, whatever).

Clearly what is needed are models who can do 10 pullups in a row and squat 100 kg (220 pounds).

That ideal will rule out the starved and the couch potato.

I'm talking the "Xena, Warrior Princess" look.

Also, if people emulate skinny models, why wouldn't they also emulate fat comedians? Indeed, since obesity is a far more prevalent problem than "starvation" eating disorders, there is at least as much evidence (absurd as it is) to suggest that John Belushi, John Candy, Alan Sherman, et. al. are a greater threat to the public health than a few skinny supermodels.

"Also, if people emulate skinny models, why wouldn't they also emulate fat comedians? Indeed, since obesity is a far more prevalent problem than "starvation" eating disorders, there is at least as much evidence (absurd as it is) to suggest that John Belushi, John Candy, Alan Sherman, et. al. are a greater threat to the public health than a few skinny supermodels."

It interesting that no one has broach what seems to me to be the most obvious issue of all when talking about the fashion industry and the way it affects people. Granted, I think the class distintion raised in the article is important, what about the gender issue? As a preface, I am in no way trying to suggest that men do not have their fare share of body image issues, however, in a world that is run by men, it seems women's body image issues more often tread the line of unhealthy.
I would like to suggest that these images we have of beauty are ingrained in us the day we are born. Many men like to argue that women perpetuate the problem. This is true, women do buy the weight loss products and the short skirts that many of us claim to be male imposed. However, the point that is missed is that women are basically tought from day 1 (by the world around them) that to be attractive and desireable to men you have to look act and dress a certain way. Even those of us who have at some point or another apposed those stringent gender roles (myself being one of those rebels) have the potential to come back to the stifling affects of them. (especially if you live in Los Angeles.) The problem with legally changing restrictions on models weights is that it is adressing a symptom. Though it can be argued that these stick thin supermodels are only perpetuating the problem and thus, part of the cause, I don't think at this juncture in time anything can really be achieved by making laws against it. It is not something that can be battled by laws. People have to change themselves, women have to find new ways of gaining power. Men have to stop thinking of women they deem unattractive as useless.

To adress the quote I took, I find it interesting that fat male comedians were used as an example, stating that these fat men should have just as much of an effect on society if thing models have the effect we claim they do. The problem with this hypothesis is that you are referring to a completely different demographic. People specifically look to comedians to laugh, not to learn how to dress. There is absolutely nothing sexually enticing about the role of comedian. There is nothing that sells these comedians through sex. Nothing. Celebrity is not the problem. No one wants to look like Donald Trump, having the money he has, however might help get the ladies. The other difference here is that you named all men, hello. The majority of eating disorders like anorexia and buliema affect women. Maybe this is part of the problem. Why do you think there are so few successful female comedians? Because the world has not found the ability to accept women in this "a-sexual" world of slapstick, dirty jokes and goofy faces. Though you do see a few fabulous women on SNL among the years, women are generally less well received in these types of situations. Maybe if women were allwoed more freedom in the comic realm, or others like it, there would be less of a need to be seen as a sex object.

Some people really are naturally that way. My uncle's family is crazy tall and thin. I'm not sure how it's possible. My brother had the same thing going on until he hit his mid-20s. In his teens, he could just eat and eat and eat and you could still count his vertebrae through his shirt. :P

When I visit with my uncle & family, I tend to feel very short and pudgy.

I kinda think you are thin ... in a good way...

The smoking gun...

I would guess that the major health problem of thin women is the cigarettes they smoke to stay thin - because smoking is bad for your health but it is effective at losing weight.

Now there's an interesting point. Millions (a guess) of women are smoking cigarettes to lose weight because the only weight loss drug alternatives are on prescription. Diet drugs have their dangers compared with no drugs at all, but are maybe not as bad as smoking.

How about doing some weight loss drug trials which compare diet-drugs with cigarettes, to see which is the least dangerous?

Want to solve the stick-model problem and get women who look like women jobs as fashion models? Get more heterosexual men into the field.

It's no surprise that fashion models have bodies better suited to tall 12 year-old boys than healthy adult women, when you consider the demographics of the tastemakers in the fashion biz.

I've never met a straight man who actually thought those girls were really good-looking. Their only appeal to men is as markers of status. And if women for the past few decades have been taking them as examples of what beauty means, then they've been sold a bill of goods.

I know it's verboten to extrapolate from personal preference, but in terms of ideals (aesthetic and health-wise) I wonder why sports and athletes come up so rarely in these conversations.

I certainly understand the dominant position of the fashion/beauty complex in our popular culture, but we all (should) know that exercise is a (the) key element for general health. Why not promote the benefits honestly associated with the outliers who are top-level athletes (including their looks) instead of wring our hands about the downside associated with the outliers who are top models?

For my buck, I can see a lot more attractive women by watching 30 minutes of a track meet than I do by watching 30 minutes of the latest runway show from Milan. And I'd say we all have a much better shot at getting within a standard deviation or two of the top athletes than we do of ever looking like Heidi Klum. Sure, we may never look like Laird Hamilton / Gabrielle Reece, and it's unlikely we'd reach their levels of physical skills, but in terms of fitness and general appearance just strapping on a pair of running shoes 4-5 times a weeks would put us a lot closer to them than just about anything we can do would put us close to Heidi Klum.

Cheers,

"Want to solve the stick-model problem and get women who look like women jobs as fashion models? Get more heterosexual men into the field." That's not the only issue, and probably not the main issue. Fashion models are hired to show off the clothes, not themselves. The industry theory seems to be that if the model looks like Marilyn Monroe or Lucy Lawless, no one is going to notice the clothes. That's true for me - but I don't buy womens clothes, I just pay the bills for my wife's shopping. Most women shouldn't be as distracted by the model.

What I want to know is, why do women who know quite well that they are not and never will be a stick figure buy clothes that are designed for stick figures?

I think Matt is on to something. Compare the women who appear in Playboy or Penthouse against the women who appear in Cosmo and it's almost like they're from different species. Men like T&A, not sticks & bones.

I think the great poet Sir Mix-a-lot put it best when he said:

Now Cosmo says you're fat
Well I ain't down with that...
Baby got back.

Still brings a tear to my eye after all these years.

So at any rate, I must disagree with TheHatter's rant that all of this is the fault of the hated male. If women are starving themselves to look like fashion models, they're not doing it because men like it. As far as I can tell, they're doing it because rich female socialites like it.

For my buck, I can see a lot more attractive women by watching 30 minutes of a track meet than I do by watching 30 minutes of the latest runway show from Milan.

True, though to some extent it depends on the event - the distance runners can be way too thin. The sprinters, however ... now those are some hot bodies :)

Tiger Hawk asks whether cracking down on skinny models won't contribute to obesity.

That seems unlikely -- models, actresses, beauty pageant winners and the like have been getting thinner and thinner while the population has gotten fatter and fatter. If anything, I'd say the causality is opposite: as society gets fatter, the significance of thinness as a status symbol increases.

The big problem with runway models and modern fashion designers isn't really one of sexual preference or how the model overshadows the clothes.

It's sewing.

Starting in the 1950s, we got a whole bunch of artists/designers who couldn't sew their way out of a paper bag. Any moron can make a blouse that fits a girl with no figure. It takes a real bit of talent with a needle to come up with a scratch design that fits women with breasts and hips.

That's the big reason we started seeing all of the figureless girls in the 1960s and 1970s, and why we still see them today. The designers, for the most part, can't actually make clothes that fit actual females, so they hire tall little girls and wrap them in whatever fits the color scheme of the month.

I guess there's a reality show on about fashion designers. Apparently, one of the challenges they ran was for each designer to design an outfit— for another competitor's mother.

There was a high frustration and failure rate reported by the devotee of the show who told me about this. She did, in fact, recount this with glee. :)

On the obesity problem (which is clearly separate from anorexia*), my major thought is that it is hardly surprising, as it has become not only more difficult but actively dangerous to go walking in much of the US now, particularly in suburbs. They build these subdivisions with no sidewalks, no nearby amenities, and no pathways to parks that don't cross multiple major thoroughfares, and then wonder why childhood obesity rates climb?

People thought I was crazy in college for walking to work, and given the routes I took, I'm not surprised. But I didn't have an alternative, and besides, it was good for me.

*I did my one of my college theses on eating disorders and body image— inspired by far too many friends freaked out about weight— and I was surprised to discover that there are risk factors for anorexia, just as there are for most psychiatric disorders. The obvious one is living in a home where a high importance is laid on physical beauty. The one that surprised me was the risk factor, for girls, of pursuing a higher level of education than their mothers. When paired with a third risk factor, that of female intellectualism being belittled or less valued than that of male intelligence, one beings to see a fairly scary trend. Anorexia, and its relative bulimia, is not just a beauty issue but a control issue, and a way to displace fears of succeeding in the face of opposition (and possible censure for that success.)

As far as models go, their BMI has dropped precipitously over the last century. As of late, they represent less than 2% of the population. And for your information, a BMI of 18 is higher than the average. Scary stuff.

I have some friends in the modeling business, and it was from one of them that I first heard the words "laxative abuse". She was describing the various tactics she'd used in her twenties to keep her figure slim enough to get work, and how they were causing stomach problems in her thirties. On at least one occasion, she passed out from hunger in the middle of a photo shoot, and woke up on a cot in the back room of the studio.

These days, she works for a top plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, and tells stories about the women coming in to have their botched breast implants replaced or removed, as well as the customers who bring in magazine photos to show exactly what they want to become.

My favorite was the day a woman walked in with a Playboy centerfold from the Eighties, wanting breasts exactly like the modestly-sized, obviously natural ones in the picture. My friend was pleasantly surprised, because it was her centerfold, and she'd always thought her breasts were a bit too small.

-j