discussion

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Welshwoofs wrote: »

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

You get it far too often on My Fitness Pal. The whole site is about eating healthily rather than having VLCD or plain and simple starvation, but there is still the subset who are convinced that dancers and gymnasts have no muscle on their legs (and presumably do everything through the power of their mind to overcome gravity) and post threads about lemonade diets, eat like a bird diets, etc.




ETA: DD2 went to a health and fitness exhibition a short whole ago. She's been offered a job as soon as she is 16 as an exercise/model promoting one particular equipment because her body type is what they want to sell to everybody else. She's not got that way by using their particular exercise - she's got that way through inheriting the build from her father. She does exercise and eats well - but they're not interested in that, all they are interested in is a young, pretty girl with long legs, long arms and long body so they can sell their product to short, dumpy middleaged women.

lostinrates

FBaby wrote: »

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!

Again, I think this is healthy, and pretty perfect an attitude, I am sure it works beautifully in your family...but in wider society this message is not getting through or failing. I think you are right about many of the qualities, I am suggesting an addition to the qualities needed, not a reduction. There are even fewer of these women, but they would be as 'unobtainable' yet a healthier portrayal for women who lack guidance as super as yours.


There are a few, in your example, of nose. Erin o conner is no less beautiful for looking like a woman with a beautiful nose, even if its not the nose people deem perfect. She still had the other qualities you list.

pigpen

FBaby wrote: »

My message above was in response to lostinrates.



So that's what you are teaching your daughter, expect 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.

I didn't realise your daughter was one of those in the pics..

And it is accurate.. those in pics like that starve themselves or they don't get in the pics more often than not, they are also heavily photoshopped the same as magazine covers.. they are fake pictures of fake people.. I don't need to teach them anything they can all read quite fluently and can read the articles with young women saying how they starved themselves to get in pics and try to change themselves for the sake of others. They also cover such things in PSHE lessons at school Very few people are naturally of that build if they are us normal people don't care. Teenage girls can be total cows when the mood takes them and they say all manner of things to upset the 'victim of the day'.. the knack is teaching your children to realise this and to ignore it and take it for what it is... little girls being spiteful or jealous or just plain evil.

My children don't give a toss what anyone else looks like.. we are individuals and it is appalling anyone would feel they had to be something they aren't for the sake of a few crumby pics on a website.

I would actively discourage my children from becoming part of that circle and lifestyle.

lostinrates

FBaby wrote: »

My message above was in response to lostinrates.



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.

One of my closest friends is absolutely like this....six feet, bird bones, and weighs a startling ly low amount (and has modelled) but eats from the time the sun rises till the time it goes down. Then has a midnight snack:rotfl: She is stunnning and wonderful a person. (Otoh, i think as a photo, with no knowledge of 'her' she does suggest an image that is just not healthily possible for most women)

FBaby

pigpen wrote: »

I didn't realise your daughter was one of those in the pics..

And it is accurate.. those in pics like that starve themselves or they don't get in the pics more often than not, they are also heavily photoshopped the same as magazine covers.. they are fake pictures of fake people...

have you read the posts above? Or just not bothered and decided to stereotype for the sake of it? If you do read, you will see that a number of kids look like this naturally. It is not my daughter on the picture, but it very well could have been, her legs look just like that and her arms are proportionally as long and slim. Even her fingers seem to go on for ever. She is a size 6 1/3 feet but just about an E.

Teenage girls can be total cows when the mood takes them and they say all manner of things to upset the 'victim of the day'..

Yes, that exactly what the girl making that statement to my daughter loudly was, a cow. Maybe she too had a mother telling her that all kids looking like this look the way they do because they starve themselves. Not the way to teach tolerance.

FBaby

lostinrates wrote: »

One of my closest friends is absolutely like this....six feet, bird bones, and weighs a startling ly low amount (and has modelled) but eats from the time the sun rises till the time it goes down. Then has a midnight snack:rotfl: She is stunnning and wonderful a person. (Otoh, i think as a photo, with no knowledge of 'her' she does suggest an image that is just not healthily possible for most women)

It upset me a bit because my daughter was a child who ate very little. When she was 18 months old, she was referred to hospital because she was in the 90% height, but only 8% weight. She saw the specialist, and he said she was just fine, healthy and just naturally slim. She remained a very small eater until she was about 8, but gosh did she make it up afterwards! She loves her food way too much to starve herself and in any case, I wouldn't have it, simply because it isn't healthy. She just remained proportionally tall and slim.

lostinrates

FBaby wrote: »

It upset me a bit because my daughter was a child who ate very little. When she was 18 months old, she was referred to hospital because she was in the 90% height, but only 8% weight. She saw the specialist, and he said she was just fine, healthy and just naturally slim. She remained a very small eater until she was about 8, but gosh did she make it up afterwards! She loves her food way too much to starve herself and in any case, I wouldn't have it, simply because it isn't healthy. She just remained proportionally tall and slim.

She is lucky this is the desirable aesthetic and she fills it naturally now. She is even more lucky to have health now, and a supportive mother who knows her body is the shell 'she' comes in, not her entirety as a person.:)

thatlemming

I'm the same height as the majority of the models on ASOS (5'9-5'10) and my legs look like that.

I'm healthy. I don't starve myself. I'm a damn sight fitter than most of the whingers on this thread as I compete in my sport at BUCs, and previously for my county and region.

Just because you don't look like that, doesn't make it 'worrying' or 'bad'. Wow this thread is horrible.

mildredalien

It's as bad to criticise and demonise thin women as it is to do the same to curvy, medium-sized, overweight, obese etc. etc.... Some women are naturally thin with few curves. Of course it's a shame that these women are over-represented in the media but that doesn't make them any less real women or necessarily less healthy.

Person_one

Yes, there are people who are naturally very very slim who are healthy.

Why does that mean we can't be concerned about the messages young girls are getting about appearance? I don't believe every single model out there is of the naturally skinny type anyway, drug use has always been rife among models and a quick google finds a study showing that as many as 40% have eating disorders.

What teenage (and younger) girls are being told loud and clear is that they are supposed to be attractive, and that the thinner they are the better. That's problematic, whatever your natural shape.