If someone were force-feeding themselves via tube in order to gain weight to fit into a dress, trust me, I’d think it was just as stupid.
Well, all those behaviors carried to an extreme make me go :rolleyes: in addition to a tube hose for feeding. For that matter there is a shitload of behaviors that are not IMO wrong in some moral sense but will make me think WTF? about the person doing it. Fine, you have the right to do so. I also have the right to go :rolleyes:
So I guess at least I am a somewhat consistent judgemental asshole.
And why a nose hose? Why not the equivalent of a chastity belt for the pie hole? I can weld something like that up in the shop for 50 bucks. It will be an extra twenty for the Masterlock though.
I was a plus size bride and I called ahead to David’s Bridal and told them my pants size and had them pull about 6 dresses in various styles for me. After I’d tried those on they went and got me more dresses in the same size from their racks and I ended up with a perfect dress (without the green sash) that needed no alterations. The best part about the dress was that it laced up the back instead of having a zipper, which meant that if I gained a couple of pounds or lost a couple of pounds it would still fit and I wouldn’t need any alterations.
They almost all need SOME sort of alterations - now mine fits in the waist but is too big in the shoulders, and I was told they almost all are (to make sure there’s enough beading and whatnot to be able to alter.) Well, I suppose if you did get that damned strapless dress that wouldn’t be an issue. 
Anyway, if you buy something with a train it WILL need to be altered, because (to my surprise) the bustling doesn’t come that way from the factory. You always need to add the bustling points.
And Dangerosa is totally on the money about twenty pounds being the watershed weight. That’s what I’ve lost and it’s made all the difference in the world. I’d like to lose another ten but I feel very good here and people have noticed.
I get that (and already said I always have to have formal dresses altered myself, a bit) but people here seem to be saying brides are buying dresses that are too small, paying for alterations which leave the dress too small, and engaging in extreme dieting to fit the too small dress. So you’re paying for a dress that doesn’t fit, paying them more to make it not fit some more, and then literally starving yourself to make it fit. And this makes sense to people? 
Da hell? Becoming morbidly obese is WAY WAY more harmful to the health than a generally perfectly harmless procedure like a tattoo or a piercing.
And you’re even more completely off-base in suggesting that the revulsion generated by the feeding-tube practice is due to its being a “step taken to achieve mainstream beauty”. If we were talking about plump brides trying to “achieve mainstream beauty” to the extent of losing some weight by, say, well-managed moderate diet and exercise, everybody here would be nodding their heads in approval and congratulating them on their self-discipline.
It ain’t the goal, it’s the approach. What is mockable about the nasogastric tube diet is not that it’s being used in an attempt to conform more closely to conventional ideals of body image, but rather that it requires GOING AROUND FOR DAYS AT A TIME WITH NOTHING TO EAT EXCEPT WHAT YOU PUT IN A FUCKING TUBE THROUGH YOUR NOSE AND STOMACH.
I have no hesitation in concurring that people who are willing to put up with the discomfort and medical risks of this procedure just to lose a few pounds with unhealthy rapidity probably do have some issues in the psychology department. And that’s not because I think they’re being insufficiently hip and unconventional.
So people get attached to their “number size.” So they will order their dress in their size, say an 8, not realizing that in bridal sizes, an 8 is more like a 4. That would explain the ordering dresses too small, but I got nothing on the rest of it…
(I know people who won’t buy clothes in a higher size, even if it would fit better and look better. They would rather squeeze into too small clothes. People are strange).
OH! Now THAT I understand! 
I don’t think that’s what’s happening - in the NYT article, one bride wanted to fit into her grandmother’s wedding gown and another was trying to lose the weight prior to shopping. It’s possible that the second will put the weight back on and have to lose it again , but I don’t think it’s the plan.
People do get attached to their number sizes , but the difference in bridal gowns is not entirely due the the manufacturers trying to make brides even more insane. Some of it is due to the fact that its a dress and therefore you must buy the size that fits the largest measurement. And some of it is the style - I can wear different sized shirts depending on the style. If the shirt is supposed to fit loosely ( hangs from my shoulders ) I take a smaller size that if it’s supposed to follow my shape and has darts and such.
<blink, blink, blink>
Um, when I went dress shopping with Tara, she looked at the dresses that were in her size to find one she wanted to purchase.
How many people go clothing shopping and don’t look in their size? :dubious:
You seem to be focusing on how many deaths this diet has caused, rather than looking at the big picture of “This is a really stupid thing, that people are doing for stupid reasons.”
I’m not sure you understand how wedding dress shopping works - if you can find something you like in your size to try on, you’re basically lucky. If you’re heavier than, say, a size 12, you aren’t likely to find anything in your size in the shop. Wedding dress shopping was easily the worst part of my getting married experience.
Seriously. At the nicer bridal salon, the one with the more expensive dresses, they had exactly one in each size and it was a sample size. Now, some of those could be ordered in other sizes. A good half COULD NOT (because they were no longer this season’s dresses) and had to be altered up from the sample. They kept trying to assure me that it was, indeed, possible for them to alter a dress they had to cram me into with rubber bands in such a way that it would fit me.
ETA - “look in her size”? By the way, at the fancy place you weren’t allowed to look at the dresses yourself either. (Or take pictures.) The attendants pick them out. Hands off. And there are certainly not size racks. Or room for your rack in the size, for that matter.
Even at the place I ended up going to, which was a salon but not the fancy downtown one, they did have sizes (well, up to a 10 and 12, at least) but not at all every dress in every size, so there were a lot I didn’t get to try on at all. And there as well many could not be ordered. They tell you that, say, you can have the back made into a corset style to shove all of you into it, which is what they were originally going to do with mine.
All of this discussion about wedding dresses makes me glad I couldn’t have gotten one even if I’d wanted one – I was pregnant with the sprog and had no desire to spend upwards of $1000 on a maternity wedding dress. White would have been somewhat hypocritical anyway.
Meanwhile, the groom just rents a tux for the day. :smack:
So your plan is to start marketing bondage wear to shallow women getting ready for their wedding day?
I think I can get behind that.
That kind of thing right there was why I ended up buying my wedding dress from a resale shop. I’d gone into a few of the fancier salons/boutiques with Stickman and a couple of them I came out not only disappointed but actually crying my eyes out because the salesladies made me feel like a cow because I was a size 14. All I wanted was to feel pretty for my wedding day and they kept making me feel like I was horribly ugly because I wasn’t some tiny-waisted no-boobed stick figure.
It was an incredibly surreal experience. I went with my mom and my two matrons of honor (actually a no-no - one is only allowed to bring two other people, technically) and there was one other girl there trying on dresses. We were all laughing and cheerful and kind of wishing they had some damned wine up in the place, but that other girl’s people were like a hanging jury! My mom tried to talk to them and got the very clear message that they were not interested. Just dour stares. WTF?
Were you all in the treehouse, or just the judge?
“Will you be having the sea bass or the liver and fava beans?”
Isn’t halitosis one of the side effects of ketosis?
“You may kiss the bride.”
“He said may, right?”
Shotgun wedding?
I said “fuck this shit” partway through trying to wiggle into a sample sheath dress. Ended up buying a long white not-bridal dress off the rack at Jessica McClintock for less than my mother had paid for her own bridal dress over 25 years earlier. No alterations. Easy.
(And count me in among the apparently super-mean-judgmental people who think it’s pretty fucked up to undergo something that we typically reserve for saving the lives of very ill people, just for purposes of a crash diet.)