Celebrities like Longoria, who apply the word “fat” to themselves when they are clearly no such thing, might be part of the problem. But how about Mariska Hargitay, who referred to herself as full figured in Self magazine? My first reaction: “Mariska Hargitay? Really?” Glossed Over says:

Is Mariska Hargitay’s appraisal of her body self-deprecation, the misuse of a term commonly used to mean “plus-sized,” or the result of working in an industry where breakfast is a cigarette and a swig of Starbucks? I don’t know, but it depresses the hell out of me.

But then Jezebel jumps in to say that Hargitay might not mean what we think she means:

I sincerely doubt that Hargitay is trying to tell Self readers that she’s at all overweight. I think it’s more that terms like “full figured,” “curvy,” “plus-size,” and “big-boned,” have become so obfuscated by the dieting industrial complex that their original meanings are essentially moot at this point.

In mag parlance, Gisele Bundchen and Jennifer Hudson are both “curvy,” (which these days means “possessing breasts”) and Whitney from America’s Next Top Model is “plus-size.” We got an angry email after New York Times reviewer Manohla Dargis described Keira Knightley as “a big-boned beauty” because the reader had assumed that Dargis was calling Knightley fat. The thing is, Knightley is “big-boned” according original definition of the word, which is “having a bone structure that is massive in contrast with the surrounding flesh.” Her shoulders are broad and her clavicle protruding, but she has little flesh on her bones.

So now my mind is a little blown. What do we mean by terms like “thin” and “curvy” or “full figured” or “average” or “voluptuous,” and what should we mean? Is “full figured” automatically a euphemism for fat, and in the celebrity world (or the real world) is it automatically a negative thing? Is Keira Knightley really “big boned”? I don’t know the answer, but I sure would be interested in having the conversation.

Thanks to Nonk for the link!

Miss. Ferrera has been popping up on more and more “best dressed” lists recently, and it’s no surprise. Her style is the perfect blend of youthful elegance and class that you hardly see anymore.

Ok, so her look is neither groundbreaking nor is it avant-garde, but I love it just the same. America looks glossy, but not overprocessed and like the girl next door that you really want to go shopping with. The girl knows how to dress her shape without looking dowdy or obscene, and in a world of uber-thin actresses, it’s nice to see someone that looks like me out there working it.

And this reminds me that I haven’t yet seen the sequel to the movie about the pants, which is also about pants. That is very wrong, and gives me ideas for how to spend my holiday weekend.

Thanks to Anne for the link!

We all know that OK Magazine lied about Britney’s weight loss, and Glamour airbrushed America Ferrera. And now there’s another problem—or is it a problem? Conde Nast has admitted to airbrushing ultra-thin models to make them look larger.

[There is] a trend towards presenting less “extreme” images of thinness and of enhancing figures. “Where models are looking particularly gaunt, magazines are saying, ‘We can’t have that – fill out their chests…It is now deemed just as negative to be too thin as too fat. Every­one is scared of being highlighted as the magazine or label that promotes very thin girls, so they are being a lot more careful about the images they present”…

Nicky Eaton, the head of press and PR at Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue, GQ, and Glamour, also confirmed that images of models were enhanced to make them appear fuller-figured. “There have been cases where models are booked way ahead of a shoot and then they turn up two months later looking less healthy and perhaps a bit underweight. We wouldn’t be happy showing them that way, so it is then that we would need that person to look a little bit fuller.”

I think it’s a little diningenuous to pretend that this is the motivation. Remember when Kiera Knightley was airbrushed in the chest? Feministing agrees, and points out why this is dangerous:

At its core, I don’t believe this type of Photoshopping is about deflecting criticism that models and celebrities are dangerously thin. I think this is about perpetuating an even more unrealistic beauty standard than unattainable thinness (something I never thought possible): the message is that you should be super, super skinny, borderline skeletal, but without any of the things that come with the territory, like jutting hipbones or small boobs. So even the skinniest celebrities STILL require Photoshopping to meet this standard. You can be less than a size zero and still lose this game. And that’s pretty frightening.

So what do you think? Is airbrushing okay as long as we’re making the models look larger? Or is airbrushing in general just reinforcing a totally unattainable beauty ideal?

Fat Lot of Good says it all:

J.Anthony, the founder of BBWSinglesFinder, claims that it is time to “celebrate real women” (emphasis mine). Last time I checked even skinny women were real women. Weight does not have bearing on whether someone is a “real” woman or not. Claiming that a thin woman isn’t a “real” woman is just as offensive as claiming a fat woman isn’t a “real” woman…

I do take issue with J.Anthony’s assertion that BBW “does not necessarily mean a fat woman”. He says that “A BBW is a woman who is proud of who she is and isn’t ashamed of her body… A true BBW is confident, sexy and real.” Hmmm…ok…so a size 0 who is proud of who she is and unashamed of her body is a BBW? Somehow I don’t think so.

So, I’m interested in your thoughts on the term BBW. To me, the first B means that it refers to a “big” woman—but what’s the cutoff point for that? Do you think Margaret Cho belongs on this list? How about Carnie Wilson, who had weight-loss surgery—does she still qualify? Do you consider yourself a BBW? Why or why not?

(By the way, the title of this post comes from Kevin’s typo when we were playing Scrabulous.)

What confuses me is the idea of this website. Mo called it a gateway to fat acceptance yet one of the contributers had gastric bypass and mo has a blog and has had for a few years dedicated to her attempts to lose weight?

I think body acceptance is great, but if you accept your body, doesn’t that mean you are not trying to change it? And if fat is not unhealthy, why the surgery and the diet struggles?

Perhaps a clearer message would help the haters- and help us that come here and don’t comment because we are not sure what will be considered appropriate or not.

I mostly love the posts and agree with a fair amount of them- but I have read some of fatfighters comments and thought she(he?) had some good points as well. And a fair amount of people seem to be really inspired by a few famous bloggers who wrote books that chronicle their weight loss- so I guess I am confused by the gateway to FA remarks.

Seriously not a troll or trying to be rude or insensitive- just really curious and confused.

And here is what I typed:

I really can’t speak to Anne’s decision to have gastric bypass, as she was my friend long before she decided to have the surgery, and it was her personal choice. But the person who writes the vast majority of the posts here is me. If you’re looking for the face of BFD, or the body of BFD, or what have you, the buck stops here.

As for my “weight loss” blog, I am conflicted about it, and prefer to think of it as a “food and exercise” blog instead of a collection of statistics, but I’m not going to pretend it never existed. I personally have emotional issues around food stemming from the way I was raised, and feel that I did become overweight in the first place via unhealthy eating. I have learned things from diets that I’ve been on—such as paying attention to what and how much I eat, or that my body does not react well to lots of sugar—and those things are valuable to me. Even if diets are a ripoff, and diets don’t work.

I think that the cycle of trying to lose weight and losing and regaining weight is something that many fat people have gone through, and I am no exception. I’m trying to learn to focus on the right things and learn how to eat—organic, whole foods, lots of veggies and lean proteins–although people might look at me and not believe that, because I’m “still fat.” I’m thinner than I used to be–but nobody cares about that, probably because I’m also not as thin as I used to be. But my cholesterol and blood sugar went down significantly last year, whereas my weight stayed basically the same, and that’s something I’m really happy about.

I’ve had BFD for almost four years now because I feel that step one is still self-acceptance, and we should all reject false ideals of beauty and “acceptability.” And I get really pissed off about bullshit movies like Good Luck Chuck that tell us fat women are undesirable, pitiable, and disgusting. My life would have been better as a teenager if I had even a small fraction of the self-esteem I have now, and my ideal reader is I guess the teenage me, and I’m trying to convince her she’s worth something.

I believe the fact that fat people get paid less and treated with less respect than thin people is a travesty. And I think it’s hardest on women, because I think there’s a strong element of sexism in the way girls and women, specifically, are treated—fat women, skinny women, in-between women who are constantly getting messages of “wrong” and “not good enough.” And you can see for yourself the hate that is directed towards fat people, just in the past few days. According to the world, we should… well, I don’t know. “Put down the ice cream.” “Put down the fork.” Eat a tapeworm. Do some speed. Magically not be fat.

Your questions are complicated. I personally think fat can be unhealthy in some cases, even if it makes me unpopular to say so. But I also think it’s demonized to a ridiculous extent. It is not an automatic arbiter of health, and the image of “a fat person” is so ludicrously skewed anyway. (America Ferrera is not fat, people.) I think there are many factors contributing to “health” that are harder to immediately see and judge. You can’t look at someone and know how many vegetables they eat, how fast they can run, if they get enough sleep, if they’re on drugs. But you can tell at a glance if they’re “fat” or “not fat” and then you (the general you, I mean) pass judgment on that. And I think that’s beyond unfair.

We’ve talked on this blog about all kinds of contributors to overweight—from genetics to sexual abuse to illness. It’s fucking COMPLEX, and people who are just like, “Die, fatties, die!” negate that complexity and simply make themselves look simplistic and dumb. Not to mention the fact that a person’s body is nobody else’s business, when it comes down to it.

I don’t know if I answered your questions at all. I know that fatism and fat hatred are wrong, wrong, wrong, but I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about so much else, and that may be reflected here from time to time. Other bloggers in the fatosphere are far more certain, far less equivocal. Which is why they’re the hard drugs, if you will, and I’m the blog equivalent of a bong hit.

I hope you feel your comments are welcome here. I really prefer people not to jump down each other’s throats, on either side of the argument; I like that there are people here who disagree with each other. And thanks for making me sit down and think about this and type this all out; I had no intention of writing a manifesto, but I guess here it is.

Betty asks if they couldn’t show a wider range of women — normal, but not deathy. Finally, someone stands up for the non-deathy women in fashion! Okay, besides Tyra. Betty had the graphics department put together a little presentation that juxtaposes her, a model whose neck can’t hold up her head, and a skeleton. It’s all about subtlety. This could be the theme for Mode’s show, she says — healthy models. Daniel argues that it was done in Milan and Madrid, and then thinks about all the publicity those shows got. Betty wants to do it for the children, Daniel wants to do it for the press, and both agree it’s a win-win. As Daniel goes to tell Alexis, he tells Betty that they need new models, a new backdrop, and a caterer, since they can feed the models for once.

Also it looks like it had something to do with New Kids on the Block, which: bonus! Nostalgia! Did you guys see it last night? Or read the recap? What did you think?

Reader Jessica wanted to make sure we were all aware of this post from Manolo for the Big Girl. (Since I’ve been off getting married and stuff, and I just got home, it’s good to get caught up on what I missed.) So the deal is, Glamour magazine featured a cover with America Ferrera, where they both A) declared her “HOT!” and B) airbrushed the shit out of her.

Francesca will not go into the horrible quality of the photoshopping. Please go to Ayyyy and read the comments in which Manolo’s noble readers wonder aloud just how freakish are those arms, or whether it is physically possible for a woman to make her neck bend like that.

No, no, Francesca simply wants to know from the editors at Glamour: Is Ugly Betty only HOT! if she gets rid of all the fat from her arms, every bit, and reduces from a C cup to an A? Is it not possible that Ugly Betty, or at least the actress who plays her, is HOT! exactly the way she is?

And in case that wasn’t hypocritical enough, check this out:

In general [one Britney Spears piece] is a poorly written article wrapping up the “she’s fat” / “no she’s not” reactions to Sunday nights performance [at the VMAs]. Again I was ready to leave it alone until I saw this quote from Glamour Magazine executive editor-at-large, Suze Yalof Scwhartz. “Girls aren’t looking as skinny this season as they did… There’s food backstage. They’re looking sexier.” At Glamour, she noted, a model won’t be featured “if she shows too much clavicle.”

I read an issue of Glamour recently because I was researching a possible project for them and deciding if it was a magazine I could get behind. And in that issue they had a story about swimsuits to flatter every figure, and they showed pictures of women in swimsuits who were up to a size 18, and even put one size 18 girl into a bikini. (I wish I could find this article online because I meant to do a post on it at the time.) I was very, very pro-Glamour after that. And now this. What happened, Glamour? Like, seriously?

Oh, and I really do have a subscription to the magazine right now. They are substituting it for Jane, which is now defunct. And following that link, we see that ex-Jane staffers knew about Glamour’s chicanery all along:

“Glamour is not at all like Jane,” says the refugee. “It’s the exact opposite. They preach fake empowerment of ‘loving your flaws.’ Jane doesn’t point out flaws. Glamour is still preaching that women aren’t good enough.”

Actually, the title of this post says it all.

[This is mo pie, with a slight addendum: Every Woman Has an Eating Disorder discussed the Gwen Stefani quote in this article, and pointed out: "She wants to be able to wear her line? Can't she, um, make some of the clothing a little bigger? We're always looking to designers to size up, in order to reflect the average woman--wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to start?" Gwen admitted that vanity played a part in it too, and maybe she only wants to design skimy stuff, but... yeah.]

PS. The shunning does not include ASL’s Lauren Burch, who at least offers my bff a half-hearted “You Go Girl”. But one wrong move and Ms. Burch will find herself equally shunned.

PPS. America, call me!

Edited to note: It appears that ASL has edited the post to change the title from “America Ferrera Is A Big Fat Sloppy Pig” to the less provocative “America Ferrera Ain’t Starving, Y’All”. (Unshun. Wow, that’s some fast backpedaling action, Christina. Afraid of what I got? Yeah, you better be. Reshun.) Note that the link in the body of this post still works, though.

Those pictures of America Ferrera, by the way, are from this month’s issue of W Magazine.

Via Back in Skinny Jeans.