Thinism
We don’t have a category for “Thinism” or “Weight Gain” and maybe we should. Miss England has been told to gain weight if she wants to win the Miss World title. Supposedly, this is to set a better example for the youth of tomorrow. Which is, of course, binge eating.
Miss England says:
Miss World judges like naturally curvy girls and don’t like the stick-thin women you see on the catwalks. They promote healthy eating and I want to help them get that message across, so I’m giving it my all.
DListed says:
How is stuffing your face with chocolate and twinkies promoting good health? Georgia said she’s stuffing her face with extra-fatty foods, because she only has a few days to pile on the pounds.
Mo Pie says: taking the whole sexist pageant bullshit as read, this is every bit as disgusting as telling some perfectly lovely naturally chubby girl that she needs to gain weight. What Miss Georgia doing is every bit as unhealthy as that Biggest Loser asparagus thing. Stupid pageants.
Via Elastic Waist.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Eating Disorders, Feminism, International
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Sizeism drives me nuts at both end of the spectrum.
One of my best girlfriends is a very thin, size-00 woman, naturally – her parents, siblings and grandparents are all the same way. I hear people refer to her as “gross” or anorexic frequently, and it’s just as hurtful and offensive as someone calling me a pig or anything else.
People suck sometimes. :(
This reminds me of my best friend.
She has 4 kids, 3 of which are on the heavy side, just like she is. Her youngest (16), on the other hand, is something like a UK size 2 or 4 (getting awfully close to that “magical size 0” we hear so much about, ‘cuz UK sizes are slightly bigger). She’s always telling me that she thinks her daughter is anorexic – but this kid EATS. The day we moved into this house (my friend lives next door and moved into hers 2 weeks before I moved into mine), she walked me to the store so I wouldn’t get lost (lol). She got herself 2 chocolate bars and a bag of crisps (chips), and ate the lot before we ever got back to my house – and it was only a 5-minute walk!
My friend seems to forget the fact that her ex – said teen’s father – is a little skinny twerp of a man. (He’s the kind of guy who, after 5 minutes, makes you want to punch his face in.)
But my friend is constantly – seriously like a couple of times a week – moaning to me that her daughter needs to gain weight. Now I’ll admit that her ability to eat whatever she wants and stay like that makes me occasionally want to bash her head in (*grin*), I know for a fact that in order to gain weight, she’d have to eat the same amount of food as the ENTIRE family does in one sitting.
You said it, Marianne. Sometimes, people just plain SUCK. (Even my friend, but I love her anyway. :P )
I’d swap places with any of these thinnies in terms of having a bad time, would they want to swap with a fat woman? No, didn’t think so.
I guess what it all boils down to is that, if you’re a woman, it’s a lose-lose situation!!!
Look at tabloids. They will have a front cover featuring “look who’s ballooned” right next to the “look who looks like a skeleton”.
I don’t care too much about the travails of beauty pageant contestants, but I had an interesting experience with observing “thinism” last week. I was at my department’s retreat along with the rest of my co-workers and one of the women in my lab who is very thin confessed to me that she was having trouble breathing. I was, of course, alarmed, but luckily we have many M.D.s in our department so I walked up to one of them, our boss, and asked for his advice. “Did you eat today?” he asked her. She nodded, and I knew it was true…I’d seen her eat a big pastrami sandwich for lunch and a full dinner. But he looked at her skeptically. “Real food, not just a couple of lettuce leaves?” He consulted with another M.D. colleague of ours, who told her “eat something. You’re too skinny!”
As it turned out, her breathing problem was the result of a bad reaction to a new medication, and she was fine in the end. But it was pretty shocking to me how everyone, including doctors, apparently assumed that this thin but not unhealthy-looking woman was anorexic!
I’ve said it before: Sizism sucks! La Wade your story is just horrible… just like doctors who assume that every fat person’s health problem is related to their weight, they do the same with thin people. Stupid!
But also, if you click through to the whole story, she’s actually not gorging on chocolate and twinkies. She’s eating plenty of fish, nuts and avocados. I’m currently pregnant and having a hard time eating enough (first time in my life, I swear!) and I’ve learned it’s not necessary to resort to junk. I’m eating more nuts, cheese and dried fruit… stuff with NUTRITION. I hate that the media thinks fat/weight = tons of junk food and skinny = eating only lettuce and veggies. What we all need more of is healthy nutritious food instead of mostly sugary depleted junk.
And the occasional cupcake. :-D
thatgirljj – Hee! We ALL need the occasional cupcake, I absolutely agree. Also, here’s to a happy, healthy pregnancy for you!
Good Lord! Most women would be capering for joy if they looked like Miss England. She is NOT “stick-thin”. Personally, I think she’d look better if she gained a little muscle – not fat – but that’s just me.
wriggles, I hear ya. I know this is a big issue for thin women too and becoming more of one, but I still don’t think judgment of women’s bodies and misguided health advice is anywhere near as big a problem for thin women as fat women.
However, it seems to be a growing problem for thin women. La Wade, that story is awful. Nice to know that nowadays doctors are likely to either say “you’re too thin!” or “you’re too fat!” rather than actually putting any effort into figuring out what is wrong with you and treating it.
My employer blocks dlisted, but I am skeptical that the contestant is really taking in all that many calories. If it were anyone other than a pageant contestant, I would also be outraged that she was being forced to stuff herself to get her body into an unnatural (for her) shape. But the pageant world is notoriously full of eating disorders and people who think normal people should eat like 1000 calories a day max. So it’s quite possible that she is just eating normally (‘specially if it’s nuts, avocados, fish, and other good stuff) and attaining the size that she should be without the crazy pageant influence, which would be a good thing in end if not means.
That being said, either way I am not in favor of someone controlling another woman’s body size by forcing her to take in too much or too little. I believe that the idea that you can and should control your weight to the pound through caloric intake, rather than listen to your body’s needs, is what has caused so much havoc among women’s eating habits these days. So even though I suspect the amount the contestant is eating may well be quite reasonable, it is not really any more “healthy” as a philosophy than whatever she was eating before. Women are not prize pigs to be fattened up or slimmed down on someone else’s say-so, even if the “authority figure”‘s intentions are good.
Oh, and how ironic that they like “naturally curvy” girls if the means that the contestant is using are anything but natural.
Nice to know that nowadays doctors are likely to either say “you’re too thin!” or “you’re too fat!” rather than actually putting any effort into figuring out what is wrong with you and treating it.
I should probably point out that the conversations I mentioned above occurred while we were all standing around having beers so it was a significantly more casual atmophere than at a typical medical evaluation. But still, I think it shows something about the thought process involved.
(And they were both endocrinologists who do obesity/diabetes research).
Am I the only one who thinks that she isn’t even terribly thin? Honestly, it looks to me like she has the typical “I’m naturally thin so I don’t need to exercise” kind of body- skinny fat. Sure, she’s slender, but she doesn’t seem to have much muscle tone at all. She’s certainly not too thin. The only reason, I think, people are up in arms about her weight is because she looks thin due to her very boyish build. I read she’s about 5’8 and 130 pounds- perfectly normal and hardly “stick thin”
I think you’re right scg, it is becoming more of a problem for slim women. To me it is inevitable as La Wade’s story indicated, if you cannot conceive of calories not counting exactly the same for all people for all the time, it goes both ways. When people indulge in fat hate, they think it’s for free. Either they particpate or they perhaps think ‘oh l’ll try to be nice’ as if they are doing us a favour, not realising, they could be undoing themselves. The ‘obesity crisis’ mayhem is too powerful to be contained by fat people.
Being beautiful isn’t really just the body and definitely being thin doesn’t mean to be beautiful or sexy. I really feel sad to those models and beauty queens who are so thin and looks like bones covered with skin. They must learn how to eat!