Dear Russ,

http://dailyuw.com/2009/7/22/fashion-fetishes-real-women-can-be-thin-and-health/

Russ,

You’re right, the many of voices bemoaning images of skinny models plastered on billboards, smeared all over magazines, and flooding commercial after commercial absolutely have a  “chip on their shoulder[s].” But it’s not against thin women.

Rather, it’s the larger social norms propelling these images that’s got us so dang worked up. Social protocols that sternly women against women laughing to loud, demand she embodies passivity, tells her she’s “a bitch” for asserting herself, and above all, tell her not to take up to much space. That’s what’s making us mad: This idea you’re championing: being small, slimmed down, firmed and tightened up is inextricably ensnared in mainstream female “sexiness.”

Many of the writers and activists you imagine whining about “thin women,” are in fact, quite skinny themselves. Some of them are recovering from decade long battles with anorexia, the most under-diagnosed life threatening illnesses our country faces today.

Some of these individuals have stood in front of a bathroom mirror frantically scouring their emaciated frame for fat, telling themselves their concave thighs could really be a few inches smaller in diameter, or admiring their protruding hipbones and golf-ball sized shoulders.

Lot of the “healthy” size zero women you applaud could tell you tale or two chillingly similar to this. And such “horror stories” chronicle the life stories of more women than you might think. Considering the well-circulated advertisements showcasing rail-thin models--and that fashion designers still make sample sizes of their new collections in a size two--it’s hardly surprising about one in four women in college resort to unhealthy weight control tactics.

The problem is that these “horror stories” go untold. Women suffer in silence. Women wont tell you they’ve stayed up late at night chewing gum and drinking black coffee for hours after a grueling 90 minutes on the elliptical spent flipping through a magazine of waifs for inspiration.

They’ll tell you a jarringly different story.

As you affirmed, men prefer thin women. Thus thinness for many straight women is an achievement, a coveted prize. Something we have that fuller women don’t. That explains why thin females have recounted to you (a male) so many instances of strangers commenting on their weight. These anecdotes are coded: “I’m skinny and people are noticing my body. You should too.”

Don’t feel too flattered. A whole other mess of social norms and popular culture teachings--disseminated through the T.V., movies and magazines-- tell women they ought be the object of your (male) gaze, regardless of whether or not they want to fuck you.

It’s kind of you to refrain from “begrudg[ing] the ladies their exasperating fetish for tall, muscular men.” To be sure, some men who don’t meet the beefed-up male body ideal in the media touts, also experience self-doubt and body loathing.

Still, I doubt that society’s whisper telling to men to be big and beefy has the same power to damage lives as the cultural Loudhorn blaring the message: ““Be tiny!,” to women from every corner of our culture.

“Most of us could live our lives a little healthier — a few by gaining weight, yes, but many more by losing it,” you claim.

Fair enough. An approximate 60 percent of adults—and a growing number of video-game and fruitloop raised children—pack more than their fair share of pounds. A McDonalds lurks on every corner threatening to clog our arteries.

But couldn’t we all be healthier and happier if we accepted our bodies? Conn.-based NFO WorldGroup’s 2003 study suggests about 75 percent of Americans don’t like the one they’ve got.

And for women especially, loseing weight involves reduction. For men, losing fat is also cheered, but only when it is converted into muscle mass.  

Men are not encouraged to get smaller when they embark on a diet.   The blueprints for femininity, however, leave women to conclude female health is achieved through restriction. Undertaking a project of self policing and self-denial predicates fitness, we are told.

Your article adds to a choir of voices clamoring for more body modification. Our society--especially us women with those chips on our shoulders-- have had enough of that jabber. 

It’s time for more body affirmation.