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• Thursday, June 7, 2007 05:00 PM

  Maybe someone already said this

  but I just can't go through 22 pages of letters, and I think it bears repeating in any case: there are plenty of *good* reasons to dislike the bubble butt fashion. To start with, those proportions are *just* as unrealistic and unattainable by most women (by healthy means) as are the fasions of tiny stick-like build, or really big boobs. In my (completely untested) observation, sex symbols are sex symbols *because* they are out of the ordinary. It's our responsibility not to judge the rest of humanity by their standard.

  Secondly, BMI was not initially intended to be such a simplistic "measure" of health or overweight/obesity. All it is is height to weight ratio, without any consideration of what that tissue is composed of. It was intended to statistically classify the average, sedentary population. SO many more factors contribute to health or the lack thereof that I'd find statements like "a BMI over 30 is simply not ok" hilarious in their ignorance if they weren't so authoritarian, potentially harmful to people with non-average bodies, and widely accepted.

  (See wikipedia's entry on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index)

  To the writer who just doesn't believe Buffie weighs 157 because you "weigh people daily," well, you're not the one weighing HER, so how would you know? You of all people should know that people frequently don't weigh what others think they look like they do.

  As a naturally skinny person myself, I'm fed up with skinny women being blamed for all of womanhood's health and emotional woes, and it's absolutely as unjust to hold up a single specimen of any other exceptional body type and blame her for the "example" she sets.

  —firefly82 Read firefly82's other letters
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