Dangerous Curves

When my editor Lesley Ciarula Taylor sent me this story from Australia's The Age, I got all excited.

Woo-hoo!

More Australian men will choose size 14 over size eight when it comes to the body shape of their ideal woman, igniting debate on what it means to be thin.

Men's magazine FHM conducted an online survey asking whether its readers found a size eight, size 12 or size 14 model most attractive.

The survey drew 60,000 responses. Four-fifths said they were more attracted to the size 12 and 14 models than the size eight model pictured.

Most votes went to the size 12 woman, with 41 per cent of respondents saying she had the body shape of their "ideal girlfriend".

The size 14 body was preferred by 39 per cent, while the size eight came a distant third with 20 per cent.

FHM editor Ben Smithurst said the findings were good news for women.

"A piddling 20 per cent of readers selected our size eight model pictured as their ideal girl physique, while the size 12 and 14 models easily outscored their skinnier rival," he said.

"Which proves one thing, ladies: crack a beer, hoe into a hamburger and we'll love you just as much."

Okay, so it was an online survey, which doesn't make it scientific.

Still, it is encouraging news that real men like real women and not the plastic fantastic creatures too many of us aspire to be.

But before you do your plus-size dance around your computer cubicle, know one thing. Australian (and British) sizes are not the same as those in North America. Their size 12 is our size 10. In other words, if you were buying an imported dress, you'd need to go up a size.

Which means that you can't be ''hoeing'' into that many hamburgers, especially the North American super-sized versions.

But don't be discouraged. There's hope in these numbers -- and my sense is that a similar survey on this continent would get not very different results, only one size smaller.

After all, Marilyn Monroe would probably have been a size 10 today. (And yes, I know that she may have worn a 12 or even a 14, but as we've become bigger, so have dress sizes.)

Which brings me to the great debate over Chloe Marshall, a finalist in the Miss England contest.

Is she FAT? At least one dietitian -- and former pageant judge -- thinks so.

Feted and fawned over for her courage in daring to break the mould, Chloe boasts she wants to be an "ambassador for curves".

Who on earth does she think she's kidding? What she's demonstrating isn't bravery but a shocking lack of self-control.

Instead of flaunting her figure, Chloe ought to own up to the truth. She is fat and she got that way by over-eating.

The 17 year-old beautician and model is 5'10", weighs in at about 175 pounds, and measures 38DD-32-42. Seems healthy to me especially since, as she claims, she works out and is fit.

But her body type is not the leggy pageant queen usual. She's bottom heavy like so many women. You can't see her ribs like you can with so many celebrities and models today.

But at least she isn't part of the media machinery which encourages so many young girls to starve themselves to death and makes others hate themselves.

I suppose what's really horrifying is that (1) there are still stupid pageants like this and (2) women's bodies are still up for public flagellation.

So I think I'll stop writing now ... and move to Australia.

Comments

[Dave]

Again, I have to ask the same question. Who is pushing women to starve themselves? Who is supposedly creating the ideal of a bony, emaciated woman?

Heterosexual men, for the most part, like women with breasts and butts. But many women - not just beauty pageant judges like Monica Grenfell (who you excerpted) - savage their own sex.

[Antonia]

Dave, you make it seem so simple. It's not. There is a lot of money to be made, billions and billions, in making women feel too fat, too old, too wrinkled, too blemished, too out of date, too whatever.

The media brainwashing is nonstop. How many times have you seen healthy looking girls on the cover of a magazine or starring in a movie?

So look to cosmetics giants, retail giants, fashion giants, and now the plastic surgery industry for fueling the fire.

All of these are owned and/or controlled by men.

[sooey]

It's neo-capitalism. Create a product, then advertise the need for it.

[Dave]

I'll give you the too old/wrinkled part (thought that's not what your original post was about).

But I question how much heterosexual men set the tone for [specifically] how skinny women should be. The people in charge of defining body image in those industries are 1) women; 2) gay men. Straight men certainly run the companies that profit off this definition of body image, but they do not choose the cover girls.

When David Spade hosted the SNL News, he once put up a photo of a then-popular model...and said "hey - how about you guys who pick models let us guys who actually like women decide who's hot!"

There are many flaws with the way men view women...But an obsession with size 0 thinness? That comes from somewhere else...

[sooey]

I agree. It comes from fashion. Clothes just never look better than when they're being worn by models.

[Anna]

I think it would be very awesome if we could stop going "But look! Guys like a bit of meat on our bones!" instead of "I want to be healthy."

Also, the amount of anonymous hate directed at women online with "fat cow" (and much much worse - but this isn't the place to repeat such things), when men will often scream insults at women out of car windows about being too fat, when "OMG BRITNEY IS TOO FAT!" from men on t.v. three to four times her size, that desire to be thin isn't coming from women hating on other women - it's coming from a knowledge that "fat" is an insult that means "ugly, stupid and lazy, and unable to get a date!"

Slender women get treated differently in general than women with higher weights, be they average or overweight. Want to get faster service at a restaurant? Sit with a slender young blonde woman. Want to get better pay at a job? Lose weight. Want to get heaps of praise? Drop the pounds.

[Ian]

thank you. i sent this article to my wife. since we've been married, she has grown from a size 2 to a size 6/8. Quite literally, i'd never have noticed if she wasn't always upset about it. I hate the way she always says "i'm fatter than i've ever been in my life". i've never given her any reason to think i'm less attracted to her. quite the opposite, in fact. i have learned over and over again that there are many more reasons for her being upset than merely what i think of her appearance.

[sooey]

Men online? Anna, it's the same story for women of all political stripes no matter what they look like. I've been called skinny hag (I'm fashionably slim), scraggly haired (I'm sporting a terrific chin length bob), saggy boobs (I'm holding firm with nicely positioned B cups, thanks). Misogynists are misogynists - one note woman haters who can't compete with smart and funny so they fall back on "harridan, skank, cow, stick, hag"...

[Bobolink]

The fashion industry is run by women. Most of the staff and editors of the major female fashion magazines are women. Fashion and the battle to be ultra-thin is a competition amongst women that heterosexual men play almost no part. Women do not dress for men. They dress to compete with other women. How many straight men are among the most famous fashion designers? The battle for fashionability is not participated in by straight men. Most cannot understand it. Anorexia is driven by women. Most men are appalled.

[sooey]

Well, at least you didn't blame Feminists. Anorexia is a mental illness. It is not the fault of "other women".

[sooey]

And what's with the "heterosexual" men qualifier?

[Anna]

Because folks who want to play the "It's got nothing to do with men!" game always blame the situation on women and gay men, Sooey.

*sigh*

[Tor]

I don't think it's so simple to say that it's the fault of men. Men also bear a huge burden when it comes to living up to certain beauty norms. I get all kinds of emails for penis-related performance/size, and there are all kinds of shows where men are taught to primp, dress a certain way, work out, etc.
This issue of being socialized to attain an unattainable goal is not up to a group of people. It's a systemic issue - and its name is capitalism.

[Dave]

Anna - you're kidding, right? Heterosexual men are responsible for a great many of society's ills and most of the discrimination against and harassment of women.

But beauty pageants, fashion magazines and body image in 2008? Surely we can recognize that sometimes women are the agents of their own oppression. And surely we can recognize that the decision-makers in certain industries are gay men.

If we don't differentiate between the problems caused by heterosexual men and those not caused by them, it's a lot harder to solve the problems that are caused by them.

[Antonia]

Doesn't Donald Trump own the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants???

[mozo]

Turmp the short fingered vulgarian is only in it for the money. And perhaps a new trophy wife when the current one gets sick of the combover.

Maybe if we had some proper research done on the industry we could point fingers more easily. Since the end of WWII who has been controlling/directing fashion trends? Who initiated stick figure modelling and who pushed it into the spotlight? Who have been the most influential fashion editors - women, hetero men, gay men or martians looking for a good larf - and has there been a significant change in the ratio over the years?

Until then I mainly hold my nose going through cosmetic areas at the Bay as I go to buy my Stanfield bvd's.

[Dave]

Antonia - I never doubted that guys like Donald Trump were making money off the industry, but:

"Straight men certainly run the companies that profit off this definition of body image, but they do not choose the cover girls."

The pressure that magazines and pageants place on women to be thin is exerted by women and homosexual men and is bankrolled primarily by heterosexual men. But the heterosexual men would be making money off this whether the ideal woman was perceived to be a size 14 or a size 2.