Let me guess: her cite for that, as well as Jessica Simpson’s surgeries, will be the absolutely dependable Awful Plastic Surgery, a site which says, in large bold letter right at the top, “DISCLAIMER: This site is merely the opinion of the author.” Perfectly trustworthy, eh? :rolleyes:
And as for the body type this magical mystery Media-with-a-capital-M *forces *all actresses to have, what exactly is it? I’ll give you that supermodels are expected to be tall and very, very skinny (and boobless), so that clothes hang off of them as they would a hanger. Other than that, actresses come in all shapes and sizes and the (wait for it…) Media does not force real actresses to have a certain bust or hip size. Turn on a TV. Look at the Best Actress Oscar nominees right now. La Lohan may claim to be “forced” to look a certain way, but it seems not everyone else got the memo.
This cracked me up because I once dated a guy years ago who I complained to about wanting to gain weight. His reply to me was “Eat a potato every day.”
I don’t know why, but I always giggle when I remember that comment.
I’m a size 1-5 depending on where I shop (OT- Anyone else notice how the more expensive the store the lower the number?) and I have some real vintage clothing to, mostly from the 50s. The ones that fit me are size 10 on average.
Some women love to spout the statistic that Marilyn Monroe was a size 14, but that is a completely meaningless number today.
ITA. I’m 5’8" and 120lbs, and women are the worst offenders IMO. Especially when a woman comes up to me shrieking “You’re so skinny! I hate you!” with this giant “smile” plastered on her face that actually looks more like she is about to unhinge her jaw and swallow me whole.
Then she’ll laugh like it’s funny how much she hates me.
This has happened to me more times than I can count. Just rude, rude, rude. And people wonder why I usually have more male than female friends. :rolleyes:
Interesting debate this is turning out to be. I didn’t mean to step out of it but I had the great fortune to spend the last 24 hours with a woman who evidently is from a *world of fantasy * at 5’3", 34D and 105 pounds soaking wet. For a helpful visual, think of a shorter version of Selma Hayek.
But I digress… and brag shamelessly.
It seems we are prepared to accept that “normal” reflects our own individual body type but not one that approaches the well villified 0 and 2. And god forbid women choose to surgically enhance a part or two through augmentation or reduction. :rolleyes:
I didn’t realize modern feminism held such a narrow view of what’s acceptable for a woman to do with her body.
By the way, I heard of an interesting phenomenon that apparently occures regularly on a women’s topics forums like “bust.com” (I think). Seems a women will enter with a question “Has anybody seen the latest movie with that actress _______?” And a discussion will often ensue that grills the said acrtress based on her skinny ass or fake breasts or some other tangential and completely catty aspect of her appearance having nothing to do with the actual movie.
I’m seeing some of that here by some posters. Interesting.
In case those who were expressing confusion and interest are still around. Here is the way it is (was?) supposed to work. Though based on recent shopping trips, I doubt the industry follows this much anymore.
Even sizes are “misses” sizes. That is, they are supposed to be sized for the shape of a woman who has more of a so-called “typical” woman’s shape, with her waist being much smaller than her hips (around 8-10 inches difference).
The odd sizes are the so-called “junior” sizes, for women with a more straight up and down figure. And they are also called “half” sizes.
So if a woman goes from a size to a size 10, or vice versa, she’s not going down two sizes, she’s only going down one size.
Someone had mentioned getting disgusted enough at the industry’s sizing nonsense to buy men’s jeans. Which would be fine if you are what used to be known as a junior. Unfortunately men’s jeans are the same, or close to the same measurement in the waist as they are in the hips.
Though I think that they SHOULD start sizing them with measurements rather than the stupid 6-8-10, 5-7-9 way.
For those with waists that are ridiculously much smaller than their hips, (or us girls with “back” :D), Route 66 used to make a great jean called “reverse fit” (which always struck me as sily since they were made to fit the old fashioned kind of “typical woman” one with the hourglass shape).
I think someone was saying on a previous “fashion these days sucks” kinda threads that the Gap also makes a good “reverse fit” jean.
Sorry to have interrupted this great fire fight with something reasonably nice, now carry on!!
[QUOTE=QuickSilver]
Interesting debate this is turning out to be. I didn’t mean to step out of it but I had the great fortune to spend the last 24 hours with a woman who evidently is from a *world of fantasy * at 5’3", 34D and 105 pounds soaking wet. For a helpful visual, think of a shorter version of Selma Hayek.
But I digress… and brag shamelessly. [.quote]
Selma Hayek is a very beautiful woman. She’s also voluptuous and NOT super skinny.
I can’t speak for anyone else here, but my posts were certainly NOT condoning that attitude at all. I specifically did NOT say “normal” nor define who should, or should not fit into it.
I am not supporting any points regarding whether or not JS is pretty or attractive or whatever, I think she’s just fine. In my opinion ONLY she did appear to be emaciated in some photos, but I don’t think she’s some sort of freak because of it.
My points about breast size were merely from a logical standpoint. Breasts are fat. It’s very unlikely and uncommon (though yes of COURSE possible, and I said so in my last post) for a woman to be extremely underweight and also have a pair of enormous breasts.
If an extremely well-endowed woman is heavier and goes on a good diet and exercise program, she is NOT going to be able to merely “come by” super skinny every where else and yet still 32 DDDs on top. Breasts ARE fat, your body doesn’t just know "oh, well yes, she’s dieting and exercising, but she wants to keep those triple Ds so we won’t be touching THAT fat, even though we’ll get her down below 12% everywhere else.
And Once again, my point was that certain body types should not be held up to be THE standard (as in the only acceptable one) of beauty. This does not, though in your skewed logic you seem to believe it does, then equal “Oh, only MY body type should be the norm”.
You seem to be confused between the two ideas. Saying that JS type bodies shouldn’t be crammed down everyone’s throat as the standard is NOT the same thing as then equating it to "only X body type (where x is size 12 or whatever) should.
Jessica Simpson was a darling girl BEFORE her weight loss and boob job. If society is going on and on about how WONDERFUL and PERFECT she looks now that’s she’s “transformed” herself, and the media is on that bandwagon of “THAT’S a real woman” what chance does anyone else have?
We don’t, you’re just not listening, or worse, translating what we’re saying for your own ends.
That’s a nasty and immature thing to do. But again, it’s aside from the point of "we, as a society, and particularly the media, need to STOP cramming this idea that this ONE type of beauty, particurlarly when it’s not a common or attainable goal for a majority of women, is THE standard and anyone else who doesn’t meet it is just garbage, down the throats of everyone (men and women alike).
It’s not the same thing for men. All body types and looks in men are pretty much equally accepted as being “hot” in Hollywood’s or the media’s portrayals of what is “manly” and masculine.
A John Goodman, or a (what’s that really nerdy-chic skinny guy’s name?) can be just as much a contender for a leading role.
But what if suddenly only a Schwarzenegger (sure I creamed that spelling :D), type body was being held up as THE idea male? And what if suddenly every man who didn’t meet that standard was thought of as lazy, unmasculine and undesireable?
What if suddenly the current hundreds of magazine covers touting the latest "Look like UltraSkinny Starofthemoment were aimed at men who just “didn’t measure up” lookswise?
We are NOT saying demonize those who by nature or scalpel happen to fit in to this JS mold. We’re saying that is not the norm. “Not the norm” does NOT equal us then saying that it’s bad to look or be that way, or that there aren’t women who exist who fit that look. It means that it’s not a common combination in nature, and that it’s generally not attainable as you were claiming earlier by diet and exercise. We’re saying allow the “Standard” to include more than just that ONE bodytype.
Well, you do have a point. I suppose what drives these stars to sucess isn’t self esteem, or at least positive self esteem.
Really? Back to painting that attitude on me some more? I thought we got over this. I am accepting of all body shapes and sizes. How many times do I need to repeat this.
Ok, hows this. Obviously no matter how many times I state my stance on this, you will keep seeing my arguments as supporting something else. So there is no sense in further debate. Consider yourself a winner or whatever. I have more important things to do.
I think the biggest problem with this whole thing is that women (and especially girls) look at themselves in the mirror, and then look at the women portrayed on TV/movies and see nothing like them, enforcing the idea that there is something wrong with them, and that can be very damaging.
I’ll take the fat/not fat argument out of it and see if that helps.
I have always wanted a waist, cuved hips, and a nicely rounded butt. My mom has this build, as does my sister. I got my father’s build, right down to the muscular shoulders. It made me a kick-ass athelete, but no amount of exersize was ever going to give me a an hourglass. In fact, I’d just build my ab muscles and look ever more “boyish”. I was too muscular to be a waif. So, looking around, I don’t see anything that that said, yes, you can still be a beautiful woman and be built this way.
A few weeks ago, I bought the DVDs to the first season of Lost. Evangeline Lily is built just like me (at least, me when I was in better shape). Shot from behind she actually looks astonishingly like me, we even have the same hairline at the nape of the neck. 26 years old and perfectly happy with myself, I was surprised at how happy I was to see someone with my body type (who wasn’t a proffesional athlete) on television.
There is nothing wrong or abnormal with the tiny starlets in and of themselves. It’s the fact that there’s no where else to look if you’re built differently. This reinforces the message that because you do not have the build that is currently in fashion, your build is somehow wrong. Resentment and anger soon follow. Somebody eventually (wrongly) insists that you could too be the fashionable body type is you just tried hard enough, and the knock-down drag-out ensues.
It’s funny if you look back over the last couple of centuries and pool together together all the various fashionable body types (from the small, sloped shoulder of the 1840’s to the busty Gibson Girl to Twiggy) you’ll be looking at what makes up “normal”.*
It turns out to be just about everything.
*Throughout most of that time, though, you WERE expected to conform to the fashionable shape, even if you had to break your ribs, damage your internal organs, and severely hinder your quality of life to do so. Many women, rightly so, will fight tooth an nail any implication that we should re-instate that societal attitude. Plastic surgery should not replace the corset.
I don’t think that “normal” only reflects my body type and that I’m some sort of standard bearer. I also don’t vilify 0-2 sized women. Many of my students wear those sizes. I vilify a society that idolizes one body type and denigrates most, if not ALL, the others. You all want to claim there isn’t a trend in media because you want me to be wrong so you can feel good about dismissing my point, but please, show me some magazines geared towards young women, or musicians, or hot actress who are size 12s or larger. Sure, women in their 30s and 40s are interested in Kathy Bates’ work, but young girls are not.
All the small women on here who complain about being teased for being too thin must realize that fat people have it much, much worse. When kids get teased at my school, it’s either for being short or for being fat, never for being too thin. All the girls, even the tiny size 0 ones, complain of being fat, which is pretty insensitive too when they’re sitting next to a kid with a real weight problem. Things are tough all over.
When did feminism come into this?? When did I say it was acceptable or unacceptable to do anything? I think plastic surgery very often looks fake and I think it’s sad that a beautiful girl like Jessica Simpson or Lindsay Lohan would feel like she needed to get it or have to barf her dinner in order to be considered beautiful enough to remain in her chosen career.
As for me saying Jessica Simpson looks emaciated-- I think she did look emaciated in those first pictures that were posted of her in the pink bikini. More photos were posted later where she looked better, and the first photos were shot at an angle and lit in such a way that she looked stick-like. She is very thin, but her waist and butt are fuller than they appeared in those pictures. I don’t look at her very often and my initial comments about her needed carbs and looking bad were with regard to that first photo.
CanvasShoes: when I buy men’s pants, I get the ones with the adjustable side slide things where you can make the waist tighter but still have a loose, full-legged fit through the hips and down. Otherwise, I couldn’t wear men’s pants because the waist is too big.
As for the rest of this thread, I think I’m just going to be continuously misquoted, told I’m bashing thin women, claiming that all women have to look a certain way when I’ve actually been saying the opposite, and needed psychiatric medication, so I guess I’m done discussing this. Please enjoy living in a world where you believe there is no problem with women’s body image and the media’s representation of the female form. :rolleyes:
She swears she didn’t, but they do look awfully weird (look at the photo on that site, not the article-- breasts are not shaped that way when they grow on their own). Here is a plastic surgeon explaining how her breasts could change size so fast, twice in a short period of time.
I hope she didn’t have implants then have them removed at such a young age. I hope I’m wrong about that, but I don’t think I am. I also hope the kid gets better and can be happy.
Hmmm, what would the world be like if men saw an unending parade of other men in the media who were extremely fit, in shape and well toned? Just imagine a world so insane that men enjoyed watching professional sports!
The answer to your rhetorical question is that the world already is that way, and men just don’t give a flying fuck. You don’t hear men bitching about how Terrell Owens projects an unrealistic body image; you hear men denigrate him for being a loathesome tool.
Men also have the impossible standard in the entertainment industry with guys like Brad Pitt being held up as the ideal body. Again, we just don’t give a shit. Line up the numbers, though, and I’ll bet that there are just as many uber-fit men as there are ultra-thin women holding up impossible ideals.
The problem is that women internalize every goddamn thing they ever see in relation to themselves. Narcissistic much?
By the way, what’s the address of this dreamworld you live in that contains no obstacles to John Goodman and that goofy-looking rail-thin guy from getting leading roles?
As I asked above, what dream world are you living in that (omigod here it is!) “Hollywood” women all have to conform to this body type? Women and men of all shapes and sizes get film and TV roles. Attractive men and attractive women usually get romantic film roles, because people like seeing sexy people be sexy. Women and men have a hard time getting roles after their beauty has peaked, but before they’re old enough to become character actors. Hollywood has standards for both sexes. Women just (suprise, suprise!) whine about it more.
They could deform the ribs. If a woman laced her corsets tightly, over time, the ribs deformed under the pressure, and the internal organs were shifted upwards. The entire torso was compressed by it.
Not all women laced their corsets tightly enough to do this, though. Look through a selection of photographs from the time, and you’ll see many women with a natual-sized waistline.
I work in a musem, and we have a huge selection of corsets. About half are large enough to ecompass a normal waistline (meaning that, when worn, the woman’s body was only lightly compressed.) The rest are suck-it-in corsets that would have crushed the waistline to a fashionably tiny size. Nearly all women wore corsets, because of a vague belief that a woman’s frame needed the “support.” How tightly they were laced depended on the wearer.
I must note that it is possible that the selection which survives in museums doesn’t necessarily reflect the true proportion of tight lacers. Smaller corsets may have been kept more often because of their tiny prettiness, whereas grandma’s big comfy corset was tossed.
We also have a number of children’s corsets-- used much in the way training bras are today. Girls started to wear them around age eight. The ones for younger girls usually don’t have any boning-- they’re just made of canvas with tucks to strengthen the seams. As the child got older, the corset got stronger, and, presumably, tighter.
There are contemporary reports of women dying from their organs being punctured due to too-tight lacing, but they mostly come from what we would call today “advocacy groups” which urged women to discard corsets all together. I’ve never seen a case reported by an unbiased source.
I’m actually planning on seeing if the con I’m attending in a couple weeks has a corsetry vendor – I believe I recall them having one in previous years – because I could really use the lower back support on occasion. Damn comfortable stuff when properly fitted.
I used to use a broad (I mean, hand-wide) belt for the purpose, but I got it when I still had a teenager-shaped body and now I can’t lace it properly. :}
I think the point is that there are a variety of ways of being attractive, and that variety isn’t necessarily represented in the media. Yes, Kathy Bates works pretty regularly – but remember the foo-foo-rah when she did a hot-tub scene? It was way more intense than any reaction Jack Nicholson has ever evoked for showing his scrawny ass.
Excellent point, Lissa. Also, when most women bragged that their corsets were “19 inches”, what they actually meant was, when laced down to its smallest. Most women left a few inches gap on the sides, so it probably wasn’t 19 inches when worn.
And yeah, you have a point-over time, you WOULD fuck up your body. But some of the myths out there-the one that women would have ribs removed. Hello, do you people have any idea what state of medicine was like back then? If anyone ever did that, they wouldn’t have survived to tell the tale.
I’d love to get a real corset and try it. I tried one on when I was working at the museum (don’t worry, it was a modern made corset for an interactive exhibit), and when laced just firm enough, it was honestly comfy-nice back support, etc.
The only problems I’ve ever had with them (I wear them when we do historical costume events) is that you can’t bend at the waist or slouch. If your body is used to slouching, even with the support, you might feel a little sore later.
Secondly, make sure they’re fitted so that they don’t rub beneath the arms. I had one which rubbed painfully at the place where the armpit meets the side of the breast. It was hell.
Thirdly, make sure whoever’s lacing you understands that the lacing should be even-- meaning, one area not looser than another. Have them pull until they meet light resistance, lace all the way up in similar fashion, and then tie with a good knot. (if the knot comes undone, you have a slow unzipping effect which is pretty uncomfortable.)
Fourthly, make sure the bones are well-padded by seams. Nothing’s worse than a bit of metal poking out and gouging you every time you breathe.
For your purposes, you don’t really need boning. A good heavy, canvas corset made with strong tucks instead of bones would do it. If you’re planning to wear it next to your skin (which I wouldn’t recommend) make sure it has a sturdy, comfortable lining. Otherwise, wear a light, cotton t-shirt under it.
