Even as a skinny person I would just not eat at all when my boyfriend treated me badly, going for almost 3 days without food at a time when I was sad. (I didn’t even realize I COULD have a boyfriend until I got one). Then there were irregular periods and random unexplained sicknesses that took weeks or months of recovery in which I looked like a little ghost of who I once was. When I sprouted breasts, I was all about trying to make them look bigger and show them off. Then I went through a phase when I tried to gain weight just to be seen as a “normal” person so I wouldn’t always have to hear girls spitefully saying, “I hate you, you’re SO skinny!”

Or the people that would just say “Eat a hamburger!” Like my body was some kind of affront to them.

I think the best thing this girl could do would be to read “In Praise of Women’s Bodies,” an essay by Gloria Steinem.

I love my body now and I recognize that getting to this place might not be so hard for me because my body IS the beauty standard, but it was still a struggle. When I read letters like this I feel so sad because there are so many beautiful girls out there who have NO idea of how capable and strong their bodies are. Read “Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelo.

Finally, I want to say that removing the focus of your concerns from beauty is a difficult task, but worth it. Around the time I realized how beautiful I am, I also came to see how little that counted for. How so much of me was not represented by a “hot bod.” My sense of style, my hobbies, how far I can run, my grades, my investment in feminism. These are all things that suddenly took on far more importance than diet or exercise for the singular purpose of trying to change into something else. These were things that I started to do for my own enjoyment, not out of fear of public ridicule.

Oh and Tom, stfu.

Uh, Tom? Ever seen a starving person? I think they’d beg to differ.

I’m not making generalities, either. I used to be frighteningly thin. Not anorexic by the traditional definition (starving myself as the result of a skewed body image), but because I was depressed, and when I’m depressed, I can’t eat. But it doesn’t matter what the reason was, in terms of my health. I am 5′6″, and at my lowest I was 88 lbs. Not healthy. At all. Fainting spells, heart palpitations, low blood pressure. I was sick all the time, because I became sick so easily and it took me forever to get over every illness. I shudder to think what I did to my body in those years. I only hope the damage wasn’t too great.

As for your fertility statements…my doctor told me, back when I was 90 lbs, that I needed to *gain* 40 lbs before I could have a healthy pregnancy. So don’t make the sweeping generalization that thin = healthy. It’s not.

And I would like to say for the teenagers (and those of us who still hear our inner teenagers) that thin does not equal beautiful. I was thin as a teenager. And I felt hideous. I barely had breasts. While my bottom half was a bit rounder than my top half, my hipbones jutted out visibly. My elbows were bigger than my biceps. My legs were sticks. Compared to my body, my head looked huge. (My own mother refers to one of my senior pictures as “the big E.T.-head picture.”) Ooh…sexy. :P

Now, guess who I got compliments from back then, in this age of “skinny is beautiful”? WOMEN. Guys, without fail, told me I’d look so much better if I’d gain some weight. (When they talked to me at all. Usually, they were talking to the girls with boobs. :) To this day (I’m 110 now — still thin, but less scary), men tell me I should gain weight. And the women gush about how they’d love to be thin like me.

Ladies, we’re doing this to ourselves. And we need to stop.

Honey – don’t drink the Koolaid! thats what I say —- realize now — that everyone is not meant to be thin — or a doctor or even a politician. It takes all kinds to make a world. Be who you are — be proud — and enjoy your life. Be healthy – make good choices as for what you eat, and how you take care of your body.

FOCUS on health — focus more on your emotional health than on your body —– and THAT is how you will learn to accept yourself. Once I realized that no matter how hard I tried I would never look like “them” I realized that I could either give up — or accept it.

And to Tom — you need to realize that just because someone is THIN does NOT mean that they are healthy —- both inside and out. Health is relative to the person’s individual situation. Stop making generalities. I think you should research what happens to women after menopause in relation to fat metabolism. …the body sends a message for women to GAIN weight in order to be healthier. read up.

ps Tom – 140? It would be hypocritical of me to judge you by your weight, but I am sure other women on here know what I am thinking. ;) 140 on a man – unless you are about 5ft – is starvation.

I’ve just been reading this thread and had the following observations and opinions:
While the fact that more than half the population in America is overweight might make it normal to be that way, it does not make it the preferred way to be. Even if everyone on the planet were obese, the fact that everyone is like this doesn’t make it any healthier. A size 12 being the average by no means makes it the ideal. Perhaps it’s so hard to get people who are overweight to like themselves because they know deep down that it’s not healthy, and they don’t like that they can’t be healthier than they are. Certainly, telling heavy people that it’s okay for them to be that way, sends a bad message, in that it encourages and promotes unhealthy living. It’s unhealthy to be fat. So we shouldn’t be telling the obese that it’s okay to remain that way.

Yes, the body, whether fat or thin, is an amazing super machine. But let’s not allow our awe of it to obscure its illnesses. It does a sick person little good to extol his body’s virtues while he’s dying from pneumonia. Typically, only taking the necessary steps to get better will actually cure him. You can list all the positive truths about yourself you want. But in the end, if you were fat to begin with, you’ll be fat when you’re finished. You’ll not be able to mask that truth no matter how many pep talks you give yourself.

We tell women that their bodies need to look a certain way (thin), not because we’re shallow, but rather, because thin is a healthy way to be. The thinnest people live the longest and have the highest quality of life. This has been proven over and over again. So the thin ideal is not some sort of conspiracy among men to keep women down, or anything else sinister like that. It’s merely an expression of what people (males and females alike) want to see. Even the heavy would typically rather date the thin than they would other heavies.

People’s desires for healthy associates probably comes from natural selection. Put simply: The healthier you are, the better your chances of having healthy offspring, and imparting your healthy ideals to your kids. Evolution weeds out unhealthy preferences (such as an attraction to fat mates) because those who support them are less likely to pass them onto subsequent generations – they often end up dying before ever having children. Anything that interferes with a person’s reproductive capabilities is frowned upon by natural selection. So it’s natural that people on the whole prefer the company of the thin to that of the frumpy.

One poster lost me when s/he argued that if everyone looked the same (thin) then they’d also act, do, and be the same. This idea is ridiculous because it totally dismisses the individuality that our brains grant us. Even if everyone had a thin body, the differences in their upbringings and experiences alone, not to mention their genetic differences, would make them not the same. Even if we consider just the thin bodies, we can’t say that they’re all exactly the same, just because they’re all thin. They still have different fingerprints, shoe sizes, different colors of hair and eyes, and so on. They would be ticklish (or not) in different places, and each would still have their own unique scents. So there’s no reason to think that the “diversity of experiences” that we all now enjoy would be any less in a world without the Rubenesque.

Kids of ten years of age or less are right to be concerned about their diets because establishing unhealthy eating patterns at these ages is very easy to do, yet so hard to reverse once adulthood is reached. Now if their concern becomes an unhealthy obsession, then this is another matter entirely. But if all they want is to eat only what they must to keep their bodies well-nourished and slender, then we adults ought to encourage that. Because we do not, we’re seeing the highest rates of childhood obesity in history.

On believing that you’re beautiful: This only gets you so far. Perhaps you are. Perhaps you’re not. Who decides? You, or the people around you? When I view myself in the mirror, I see a reasonably handsome guy peering back at me. But I also hear often from women that I’m unattractive. Not all of them feel that way. But most do. So, am I really attractive or really unattractive? There is no absolutely true answer here. If I’m interested in mating with those women, then I’d better at least consider their opinions a little. But their opinions need not affect our self images so long as we keep in mind how relative and non universal it all is.

I don’t mean to suggest that maintaining a healthy weight is easy. I myself have fluctuated between 138 and 194 pounds during my adult years, and I’m currently near the high end of that. But though a healthy weight is difficult, it is for me nonetheless, the ideal. One day, I’ll get back to 140 and keep it there. Hopefully, that will be this year.

You don’t need makeup or fancy clothes to be beautiful. This part I agree with and do think that some part of society’s obsession with thinness is driven by the extensive marketing machines of the cosmetics and clothing industries. But though these companies through their relentless ad campaigns make society wish it was thin to an excessive degree, the basic ideal itself is a good one, as discussed above.

Yes, a person’s sense of his own beauty must come from within. But given how socially interdependent and interconnected we humans are, it’s difficult for even the most resolute among us to be totally insensitive to others’ opinions of us. It seems to me that if you really want to maximize your self opinion, then you need to make yourself into a person of which the greatest majority of your social circle approves. In our culture, getting thin will move you a long way toward greater acceptance and approval from the crowds.

Well, I’m not sure how many characters I can post on here in a single message. So I’d better close this comment now, before it gets too big. I’ll read some more of this thread and perhaps post additional comments later.

Take care,
Tom Hesley

God Bless .