discussion

anniemf2508

FBaby wrote: »

I find this thread upsetting

My daughter's legs look exactly like that. She has taken after her dad's side of the family. They are all tall and very long legs and arms. The midwife even commented on what seemed like very long legs when I was pregnant!

She is 13, 5'5'' and a little over 7 stones. Yes, very slim, but that's because she is very small (long) bones. You can't see her bones sticking out and she is already a 34B/C. Most importantly, she eats very well, and sometimes even not so well and I have to remind her about good habits (as in pouring half a pack of single cream on her strawberrys!)

I have always taught my children about healthy eating rather than being one size or another and to be comfortable in their own skin. It is a bit upsetting to think that people could judge my daughter as being too thin and not being a good role model. In the end, long legs are seen as an attractive feature. Some are lucky to have them. It doesn't have to be the result of starving.

very well said and have to agree too.
My daughter is 14 is about 5"1 and has legs like that too. She eats like a horse (i find it hard to fill her up) but still only weighs 6 and a half stone.

pulliptears

peachyprice wrote: »

I had to laugh at the cream comment, I made a chocolate flan a few weeks ago, left the pot of cream next to her slice, went back for cream for mine and found she'd scoffed the lot. :rotfl:

Sounds like mine
Her morning bowl of Weeto's consists of half the ruddy box I'm sure. Leave chocolate about unattended and it vanishes.

I wish I could eat like she does and be as thin.

MissKeith

It does worry me. I am one of those who are naturally skinny and I feel an enormous amount of guilt because my little sister has a very unhealthy relationship with food. To me, she has the ideal figure, tall, slim but not skinny, size 8/10 but still curvy. I am petite, straight up and down, size 6/8 and have what the media portrays as an ideal body. However my sister now considers herself 'fat' and is constantly calorie counting to get skinny. It worries me very much that my sister wishes she was anorexic (her words!) just to look a certain way. It makes me thankful I don't have girls!

I do have two step daughters who are naturally on the big side (and their mum doesn't seem interested in fostering healthy eating habits but that's a different story) and it does worry me that they will feel pressured to starve themselves as they grow up. We try to feed them healthy food and limit snacks when they visi but when they are used to helping themselves to the snack cupboard at home it's difficult to explain to them why we do it differently without making them self conscious about diets when they're only 8 and 6. It's a hard one.

TeamLowe

It's hard when you're a teenager and surrounded by naturally skinny ladies to not feel like a complete heffer if you're just not built that way, so I can understand the OP's point. If you already feel massive at size 12 like I did then seeing models always looking super slim isn't going to help that.

I look back at pictures and I had a lovely figure at fifteen but at the time I felt gigantic and hated it because all the popular cool girls I so desperately wanted to be were size 6-8 but I had hips and boobs and was never going to look like them even if I did starve myself.

So yes, whilst skinny is just as healthy as any other size, it's not helpful to the other young girls for all the images they see of cool people to emulate being teeny tiny and then women their size being 'plus sized'.

And you can argue til the cows come home that young girls shouldn't look up to models and singers ans actresses but they will and always have

FBaby

TeamLowe wrote: »

And you can argue til the cows come home that young girls shouldn't look up to models and singers ans actresses but they will and always have

There is a difference between looking at them, even dreaming of being one of them, and accepting that it's not because one isn't that they are ugly, fat, stupid and the rest.

Self-esteem is not about emulating an image, whatever it is, it is about accepting oneself the way they are and that it is ok to be like that too. We have all been there, feeling self conscious about one thing. I was self-conscious about my prominent nose. Does this mean that all models should have bigger nose so I would feel better about it? No, my mum taught me that my nose made me who I am. I of course fantasized about the day I would have a nose job, except when the day came that I could have afforded it, I realised that my nose didn't stop me from doing what I wanted or attracting the men I liked, because I was then mature enough to see that the most attractive feature of any person is them being happy with who they are.

lostinrates

FBaby wrote: »

There is a difference between looking at them, even dreaming of being one of them, and accepting that it's not because one isn't that they are ugly, fat, stupid and the rest.

Self-esteem is not about emulating an image, whatever it is, it is about accepting oneself the way they are and that it is ok to be like that too. We have all been there, feeling self conscious about one thing. I was self-conscious about my prominent nose. Does this mean that all models should have bigger nose so I would feel better about it? No, my mum taught me that my nose made me who I am. I of course fantasized about the day I would have a nose job, except when the day came that I could have afforded it, I realised that my nose didn't stop me from doing what I wanted or attracting the men I liked, because I was then mature enough to see that the most attractive feature of any person is them being happy with who they are.

I think this is a beautifully healthy attitude.

But it's not a beautifully healthy world, and many people, rather than accepting their nose is not what they would love to have and is part of them, instead pay for rhinoplasty, with money that they can often ill afford, and more importantly often (but not universally) allowing an attitude of what is important to be biased by this opportunity.

While not all models should have big noses, its nice when you see a woman with a stronger, natural nose....it's refreshing.

Incidentally, some of the noses most hates by their 'owners' in my social group are some that the rest of us agree are more beautiful...more noble, more characterful.

It's a shame even here people are aguing from all angles about what iOS 'beautiful'. For me health is beautiful. Natural is also beautiful and some people who are naturally beautiful fall outside of perceived norms of health measurements. This considered Ideally I think I would want models to have a healthy BMi....even if naturally people are light or heavier and healthy.....we could say, that's great, you are beautiful too, but its not an ideal job for you.

I'd also like to see more older models. Ones who are aging well certainly, but who are healthy, beautiful and older.

Welshwoofs

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

Ah, yes, the essential 'thigh gap' to convince girls they are fat if they exercise. The one that features in so many thinspo pages. And results in healthy girls stopping exercise and reducing calories even further to try and obtain (I refuse to use the word achieve).

I'm on a fitness site and was horrified the other day when a girl started a thread which was essentially a complete freak out about how fat she was and how her diet (she was netting around 600 calories a day after exercise) wasn't working. She posted full body photos of herself in a bikini to demonstrate how fat and disgusting she was....

....the thing is that she was all bones jutting out everywhere and looked like she'd if you breathed on her. Inputting the stats she'd given to a BMI calculator actually put her right at the bottom of the healthy weight range for her height....and this girl wanted to lose more because her thighs were enormous and guess what, yup, she wanted a bigger gap between them (you could have driven a bus through her 'thigh gap' from what I saw.)

So the upshot was that most people told her go and seek counselling and she ended the thread saying that she was going to drop her calories further and absolutely wouldn't do any exercise because she didn't want her legs getting bulky. No doubt she'll turn up on some pro-ana site soon

pigpen

Why would I worry about MY daughter after looking at those pics? They aren't pics of my daughter..

My children have enough about them to know these people starve themselves are 9ft 10 and are often a very unhealthy weight for their lofty heights, or they have a drug problem... or both. And of course the pics are often photoshopped.

FBaby

I totally understand what you mean, but it's all about perceiving what the model world is about. In my views, they have always been a bit like a painting I like to look out, would love to be able to paint myself, but never will be able to. That doesn't meant that I don't like looking at it, or that I would prefer to look at paintings that resemble the doodles I manage!

To be models belong to another world, one of fantasy, one I like to look at but would never aspire to become. I think that is what it comes down to, teaching my children that it is ok to look at something, be attracted by it, but not feeling the need to be the same whilst not thinking that being different means less beautiful.

I feel that if models were more like all of us, they would just become...ordinary, nothing to catch my eye. My DD went through the stage of wanting to be a model. I explained to her that it takes a lot more than being tall and slim to be a good model, that the best models are those who happened to be especially photogenic and that only few people were blessed by this quality. She admitted after a while that she wasn't photogenic that way. I tell them she looks beautiful when we look at pictures of her (and she is), but that there is a difference between beautiful and photogenic. Same with catwalk, it takes someone special to master that walk. Some beautiful girls never do and so never make it!

FBaby

My message above was in response to lostinrates.

My children have enough about them to know these people starve themselves are 9ft 10 and are often a very unhealthy weight for their lofty heights, or they have a drug problem... or both. And of course the pics are often photoshopped.

So that's what you are teaching your daughter, except that it is not accurate. Is you daughter the one who told my daughter some months back that it was obvious she was starving herself to be the weight she is in front of all her friends. It upset my daughter, but I reminded her that her real friends and family did know what she actually ate and that was all that mattered.