Modern clothes look good on hangers. Wide thin shoulders, minimal busts, and slim hips enhance the clothes without breaking the line.

In the 1930s, designers used bias cut fabric to follow the shape of a woman's body and enhance her (with a little help from foundation garments where necessary).

Now we expect the woman to enhance the clothing.

Dogs like bones.

Which affects more women in America: anorexia & bulimia...or morbid obesity?

Look up the statistics - the answer may surprise you.

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I do not deny that eating disorders such as anorexia & bulimia are serious problems for American girls...

...But why does Broadsheet keep turning a blind eye to the much greater social problem of obesity that MANY more females have to deal with??

Ohhh, that's right: it's okay to tell skinny girls to eat a sandwich already - but it is so gosh darn un-PC and insensitive to dare to talk to/about the millions of American women (and men) who are eating themselves to an early grave.

**************

The problem is not simply about unhealthy body images.

It is about our extremely bipolar, obsessive relationships with food and body size.

And the solution(s) needed go wayyyyyy beyond giving sandwiches to the skinny (or taking them away from the fat)....

More people are croaking from being too fat than being too thin. I'm all for weight requirements for jockeys and models, as a labor issue. I also recognize that there are such things as eating disorders, but most people (most Americans anyway) are fffffat!

Skinny models may make women *feel* bad about themselves, but they don't seem to be bullying women into skiping the drive-thru...

What makes you think the 2 are entirely unrelated? And what makes you think that making uber-thin girl-women the paragon of chic would help end obesity?

It's all the same coin, my friend, just the two different sides.

It has nothing at all to do with what men like looking at. Unless they are gay fashion designers trying to make women look like street hustling boys. Why women put up with it beyond me.

not "loanwolfy". Sorry!

"Lonewolfy." Sigh.

Please re-read my first post, if you wish.

What makes you think the 2 are entirely unrelated?

Ummm...actually, I pretty strongly implied that the two concerns - ana/bulemia and obesity - ARE related.

I said that we as a country have a bipolar, obsessive relationship with food and body size.

By "bipolar", I mean that so many people are either starving themselves to death or eating themselves to death.

What I called Broadsheet to task for is that the attention they foist upon situations involving dangerously skinny women is in stark contrast to their complete absence of articles on huge number of women who suffer from overeating, obesity issues etc.

Nowhere in my letter did I suggest being underweight be "the paragon of chic". I fully acknowledge that being underweight (as opposed to "naturally" slim), anorexic, bulimic etc. is a grave concern - and that such women should not be offered as models of what a body should look like.

**************

But if I can easily make that acknowledgement, then why can't the feminists out there who justifiably criticize the normalization of anorexic waifs ALSO address that many, many more women (and men) out there suffer from the opposite eating disorders...food adddiction et al?

Why is it okay to address the issue of undersized models, etc. - but turn a blind eye to the obesity epidemic...yes, EPIDEMIC...that we face today??

I just read "What I called Broadsheet to task for is that the attention they foist upon situations involving dangerously skinny women is in stark contrast to their complete absence of articles on huge number of women who suffer from overeating, obesity issues etc."

1. Of course Broadsheet would focus on the editors and stylists and designers (etc, ad infinitum) who DO things TO women.....

2. The last thing Broadsheet is ever going to do, given its access to soft&easy,gradskool-vocabulary targets (such as, say, the 'internalized-misogyny' of Coco Chanel), is to whisper a word that might even possibly be interepreted as a "criticism" regarding fat women.

silly (and, worse yet, UTTERLY predictable) Broadsheet.....I suggest it spin off on its own and try to get along without the backing of Salon.com? If it did so, I'd give "Broadsheet.com" about two months....

Of course, the only folks who have any problem at all with it are "trolls" and misogynists, etc.....

seriously...I think it's time "Broadsheet" boldly set forth on its own....what do you think?

"Anonymous"

It's this and only this: When we started judging that "thin" was a virtue and "fat" a vice, we removed the possibility of judging on a spectrum. "A little fat" could not be okay. "Extremely thin" could not be too much.

As a result, millions of women who are naturally inclined to be slightly curvy have given up the fight because they're going to be perceived as fat no matter what, so they might as well have that sandwich. Millions more, with a natural tendency to be slender, starve themselves even though nobody thought they looked bad to begin with because thinner must be better.

Fat is not a vice. Thin is not a virtue. It needs to be okay to be a little bit of either. It's better to be comfortable in your skin at a size 16 than suffering health problems at size 32. Being a size 0 does not make you *more* beautiful just because you were somewhat beautiful at a size 4. Some of us are just not destined to be models, and that's okay. Models don't become more beautiful by lack of volume, either, however, and should not be judged on that, and we really ought to have higher priorities in life than spending great amounts of time putting together an event that just involves a bunch of women walking a few feet in uncomfortable shoes in outfits nobody's supposed to actually *wear*.

I expect, however, that it will be a few centuries before the bulk of the population figures this out.