Are you kidding me? Things have gotten really crazy in our world. There are a lot of reasons you can say that, but I’m specifically referring to the obsession with body sizes of women. I’m a casual observer of pop culture and the trends that come and go. Mostly, because I like to watch people and look for the patterns in behavior and why they do what they do.
So I’ve noticed over the last few years an increasing preoccupation with women being thin – super thin. Starlets and semi-celebrities like Nicole Richie, Kate Bosworth, the Olsen Twins, Keira Knightly, and Selma Blair are so skinny that you can count every one of their ribs – front AND back, even on their chest where they are supposed to have breasts. I look at the pictures and want to scream, “Girl, eat a cookie!"
I’ve seen many laments in the media about this trend and the unhealthy affect it is having on young women and girls, beginning at very young ages. The increased numbers of teens struggling with anorexia and bulimia can be connected to the constant stream of unrealistic images where photos are doctored on a regular basis for magazine covers and promotional materials. Both Rosie O’Donnell and Katie Couric have made public statements regarding photos of themselves altered to shave 20-40 lbs off of their natural appearance.
What is going on? On one hand everyone is SO worried about these unhealthy messages being sent to our children, but on the other hand, even a normal sized-woman like Ms. Couric cannot be used in CBS’s promotional material without them trying to make her into a super-thin shadow of herself. Did CBS hire Katie for her abilities or her clothing size? Surely, the producers of The View knew what Rosie looked like when they hired her. Did they not hire her for her opinionated personality and her ability to contribute to their show? Why does she need to have pounds shaved off of her photos? They can’t do that every day on TV for either Rosie or Katie. That says to young women, “You can be talented and famous, but you’d darn well better be a size 2 or even better, a 0. That’s what really matters.
So back to my title question about Ms. Banks. She has been a very famous and sought after runway model for years. Recently, she has branched out successfully into her own television talk show & a reality TV show. So she does not need to keep her famous physique at runway model weight – which is impossible for a normal, active, healthy woman to do. You can’t eat enough to have the energy needed to function in the normal working woman/mom/wife world. According to reports, she has gained about 40 lbs. At her height of 5’10", she now weights 161 lbs. By my guesstimation, that would put her at about a size 6 or 8. Tabloids snapped pictures of her on vacation in a one piece bathing suit & immediately pronounced her fat! WHAT??? Since when has a size 8 been fat? Compared to whom??
Oprah Winfrey is another example of an accomplished, successful woman who has had a tremendously positive impact on the world around her. She works on a daily basis to find those who are wounded, overlooked, downtrodden, and neglected in order to help them better their lives and become productive members of our world. Yet, if you read the media reports of her life, more than half of those are obsessive reports about her weight. Whether she’s gained, whether she lost, why she gained, how she lost it. I say that her weight on any given day is completely unimportant! Let’s focus on her philanthropic endeavors and the good she continues to do. Forget her weight – forget any woman’s weight!!
So I say again, we’ve gotten really crazy with this. We cannot have it both ways. Either we will applaud successful women for their abilities, brains, accomplishments, and perseverance and leave their clothing size alone, or we will continue to see our young women checking into eating disorder clinics or worse yet, dying to maintain an unreasonable and unhealthy weight.
Is Tyra Banks fat? Who cares?
