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"For my daughters’ sake…I make sure that the women whose looks I admire all have sufficient fat reserves to survive a famine, and I make a lot of snide comments about the skeletal likes of Lara Flynn Boyle and Paris Hilton."
I'm not going to defend unhealthy thinness or media images that promote that as an ideal. But the above sentence triggered a now-familiar reaction to many of the "women's body image" pieces I see in Salon.
It's easy to select a wealthy, famous supermodel or actress to air one's dissatisfaction with the prevailing thin ideal. It's easy to vent one's anger toward marketing, fear of the encouragment of anorexia, and, dare I say, jealousy towards these women and those who have similar weights and body types. They're easy targets for all of that.
But I must point out that thinness is not always brought about by anorexia, starvation diets, media hype, or a Hollywood lifestyle. Some women are ectomorphs, it's a fact of life. I'm sick of reading Salon's female writers' "snide comments" about thin women, and I'm even more appalled that Waldman believes this petty carping is actually helping her daughters steer clear of body-image obsession. Even if they learn that it's not necessary to be thin, and that anorexia is dangerous, which I hope they do, I see no need for showing them a nasty attitude toward other people's bodies. Besides which, it smacks of underlying jealousy and thereby defeats her purpose.
Is it possible to promote a healthy acceptance of one's body type, and of all body types, without attacking thin people? When I read these attacks, I find it very hard to believe these writers truly wish to celebrate body type diversity. It sounds a lot more like competitiveness and divisiveness. Not all voluptuous women are abusing their bodies with food. Not all thin women are abusing their bodies with starvation diets.
A little more tolerance of your sisters, please.
