Thin people aren't famous because the media made them famous.

Great Debates
1

I think the discussions we have on this board related to thin-ness, attractiveness, obesity, the media’s responsibility in perpetrating the “myth” that thin is normal, etc. are misguided. Just look at the people we are “taught” to emulate. Or better yet, let’s look at the characters in mythical fairy tales. Beautiful damsels in distress. Gentlemanly strong knights to rescue the damsel. Is being the knight so much easier than being the beautiful damsel? NO! So why is it so wrong to expect a girl to eat right and exercise and so right for a guy to be portly and ungentlemanlike? Now look at the role models we have in life. Doctors, Lawyers, sports heroes, CEOs, successful people in general. Why are their activities so much more “attainable”? Getting wealthy is more difficult and unrealistic than getting thin. Why is it so wrong to strive to be thin when being wealthy is so much more difficult and unrealistic? To be thin really isn’t all that hard. Go to the gym for an hour a few days a week, and eat healthy. It’s a lifestyle. You want to be a doctor? You can. But you have to change your lifestyle to do it. You have to go to school. And that’s not easy. Then you have to go through this trial by fire period of being a resident. And that’s really hard. You really have to have this lifestyle for a long period of time before you can call yourself an MD. You want to be thin? Well you have to be willing to work for it. You have to change your lifestyle. How is this any different from starting your own business in the hopes of franchising into the next McDonalds? Well, getting thin is easier for one. Starting your own business is HARD, and it’s even HARDER to be the next McDonalds. You have to change your lifestyle. Any kind of success requires a change in lifestyle.

Angelina Jolie, Brittany Spears, and others known for their bodies, they don’t live their lives to look attractive to you. Angelina wants to be known for her acting. Brittany spends her time singing and dancing. They look after themselves because health is important for them to succeed. They are driven. And drive is what separates the successful from the unsuccessful. Look at the Olympic athletes. Do you think they have attractive bodies? Generally they do. Do you think they care one iota about whether or not their fans care if they are attractive? Maybe a little, but more important to them is “do their fans think they are good figure skaters, or runners, or swimmers.” Attractiveness is a by-product of being healthy. It’s not the goal. Really. Maybe you have such a hard time getting thin because you work so hard for the wrong reason. Try to be healthy instead. Then getting attractive will come naturally.

I don’t know why we have this fixation on judging people by attractiveness, an then berate others for judging on attractiveness. It’s another double standard. Everybody would rather their mate be attractive. It’s normal. The Hollywood elite are attractive because they are driven and work hard. They aren’t the Hollywood elite because they are attractive. Maybe there is a little bit of wanting the next superstar to be attractive, but how many gorgeous girls hitchhike their way to Hollywood and end up in porn, or just get day jobs waiting tables, hoping one day they will make it, only to find themselves living a normal life there. Attractive people… dime a dozen to the media. It’s the really talented and driven that make it. They may be attractive. They may not be. But since drive is a requirement for being successful, they are more likely to be on the go more often. And activity makes people lose weight. There is a higher chance that someone in the media is going to be attractive, not so much because the media wants attractive people, but because thin attractiveness is a byproduct of health and success. I’m not saying that if you become a doctor you will automatically be thin. But if being healthy is a requirement for your job: if you dance, if you perform, or if your job requires some physical labor, you are probably going to get thin. And people in the media, guess what, they are active.

So what are you complaining about when you say being thin is unreasonable? Are you just being lazy? Maybe the problem isn’t that you can’t work out and eat healthy. Maybe it’s just that you don’t have drive. Or you don’t care enough to change your lifestyle. Would you change your lifestyle to be a success? Well, why won’t you change your lifestyle to be healthy? Don’t you care about your loved ones? Why are you putting them through watching you die of a heart attack or stroke? Do your loved ones a favor and live healthy. Eat to live, don’t live to eat.Ben Franklin

2

I think the problem is the difference between being attractive and being too skinny.

Being overweight isn’t attractive. But for a woman to have a frail young schoolboy figure is also unattractive to me.

Kate Moss for example is not attractive to me, at all. She barely even looks human, she looks similar to some of the healthier holocaust survivor’s I’ve seen on film. It just is not that attractive to have your bones popping out of your skin.

To me “thin” is the same as “fat” it implies a certain imperfection in body status. Fat means you are overweight, thin means you are underweight.

Most damsel’s in distress had child-bearing hips and sizable breasts, these were characteristics favored by ancient man and men in general up until the 20th century. Maybe it’s just the instinct that such women are more suitable for child bearing, that having some meat on you is definitely better than having none (with so many children dying during pregnancy or at infancy the health of the parent was much more important in days past.)

I don’t think people believe being fat is good and that the media changed our perception of fat. I think most people, like me think ludicrously frail thinness is highly unattractive in males and females. Obviously everyone has their opinion on beauty.

Most actresses aren’t what I would call “thin.” For some of the big name actresses that I consider to have a very good body type, look at Angelina Jolie, Kirsten Duntz, Salma Hayek, Nicole Kidman (although in recent films she has been getting thinner and thinner), Charlize Theron, Ashley Judd et cetera. All of these women are by no stretch of the imagination “fat” but they aren’t what I would call “thin” either.

Thin shouldn’t be a complement, thin in my mind, at least in my common usage of the word means “underweight” just as fat means “overweight.” So thin IMO is no more complimentary or desirable than fat.

And being fat or being thin are also not really that pushed for men either. Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, et al are muscular and solid, they aren’t frail or smallish.

It’s images like Kate Moss that I think most people have a problem with, Kate Moss is not attractive and no one should ever think that is a body type to aspire to.

3

There seems to be a difference between how males look at their bodies and how females look at their bodies. My apologies for not having a cite, but supposedly teenage girls have a far more negative view about their body then teenage boys. Bulimia and anorexia is more common among females then it is among males.

Why is it so wrong to strive to be thin when being wealthy is so much more difficult and unrealistic? To be thin really isn’t all that hard. Go to the gym for an hour a few days a week, and eat healthy. It’s a lifestyle. You want to be a doctor? You can. But you have to change your lifestyle to do it. You have to go to school. And that’s not easy. Then you have to go through this trial by fire period of being a resident. And that’s really hard. You really have to have this lifestyle for a long period of time before you can call yourself an MD. You want to be thin? Well you have to be willing to work for it. You have to change your lifestyle. How is this any different from starting your own business in the hopes of franchising into the next McDonalds? Well, getting thin is easier for one. Starting your own business is HARD, and it’s even HARDER to be the next McDonalds. You have to change your lifestyle. Any kind of success requires a change in lifestyle.

Angelina Jolie, Brittany Spears, and others known for their bodies, they don’t live their lives to look attractive to you. Angelina wants to be known for her acting. Brittany spends her time singing and dancing. They look after themselves because health is important for them to succeed. They are driven. And drive is what separates the successful from the unsuccessful. Look at the Olympic athletes. Do you think they have attractive bodies? Generally they do. Do you think they care one iota about whether or not their fans care if they are attractive? Maybe a little, but more important to them is “do their fans think they are good figure skaters, or runners, or swimmers.” Attractiveness is a by-product of being healthy. It’s not the goal. Really. Maybe you have such a hard time getting thin because you work so hard for the wrong reason. Try to be healthy instead. Then getting attractive will come naturally.

I don’t know why we have this fixation on judging people by attractiveness, an then berate others for judging on attractiveness. It’s another double standard. Everybody would rather their mate be attractive. It’s normal. The Hollywood elite are attractive because they are driven and work hard. They aren’t the Hollywood elite because they are attractive. Maybe there is a little bit of wanting the next superstar to be attractive, but how many gorgeous girls hitchhike their way to Hollywood and end up in porn, or just get day jobs waiting tables, hoping one day they will make it, only to find themselves living a normal life there. Attractive people… dime a dozen to the media. It’s the really talented and driven that make it. They may be attractive. They may not be. But since drive is a requirement for being successful, they are more likely to be on the go more often. And activity makes people lose weight. There is a higher chance that someone in the media is going to be attractive, not so much because the media wants attractive people, but because thin attractiveness is a byproduct of health and success. I’m not saying that if you become a doctor you will automatically be thin. But if being healthy is a requirement for your job: if you dance, if you perform, or if your job requires some physical labor, you are probably going to get thin. And people in the media, guess what, they are active.

So what are you complaining about when you say being thin is unreasonable? Are you just being lazy? Maybe the problem isn’t that you can’t work out and eat healthy. Maybe it’s just that you don’t have drive. Or you don’t care enough to change your lifestyle. Would you change your lifestyle to be a success? Well, why won’t you change your lifestyle to be healthy? Don’t you care about your loved ones? Why are you putting them through watching you die of a heart attack or stroke? Do your loved ones a favor and live healthy. Eat to live, don’t live to eat.Ben Franklin
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4

I apologize for hitting the submit button far to early.

There seems to be a difference between how males look at their bodies and how females look at their bodies. My apologies for not having a cite, but supposedly teenage girls have a far more negative view about their body then teenage boys. Bulimia and anorexia is more common among females then it is among males. I saw ads for the first Bridget Jones’ Diary and the star had supposedly fattened up for the role. Zellwiger certainly didn’t look all that plump to me.

I do take issue with your statements that Spears and Jolie don’t want to be known for their bodies. Certainly Spears has made an issue of her body and uses it to sell her music. Given the prevalence of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood I think it’ a bit naive to believe that their bodies are of secondary importance. Women like Spears, Tara Reid, and others depend on their bodies and outrageous behavior to remain in the public spotlight. Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and Christinia Ricci don’t have to be in the spotlight because they’re not just a flash in the pan.

I don’t think being thin is unreasonable and I’m pretty much against fat acceptence. No, I don’t think it’s ok to make fun of people for being overweight but I consider obesity to be a pretty serious national health problem. Hollywood does present a very unrealistic model of what attractive women should be. As I said earlier Zellwiger was supposed to be plump, a producer gave Debra Winger a diuretic on the set of “An Officer and a Gentleman” because he thought she looked bloated, and that tall amazon woman from “Third Rock on the Sun” was asked if she could drop 10 pounds.

Like it or not, the media does not come down as hard on men as they do on women for being unattractive. There’s a thread in the Cafe about “hot” older women. How long would a thread about hot older men go?

Marc

5

I still say that being thin isn’t being healthy. I consider Britney Spears to be quite a healthy build/weight but not “thin.” Thin has the same negative connotation that fat does to my mind, actually even more so.

As someone who does body building just as hard as most any professional body builder/power lifter I know (and I know dozens) being thin is actually a worse fate to me than being fat. Fat I can deal with, fat I can burn off lifting and even use it to increase my overall body mass and become stronger. Being thin is a hard situation because the metabolism of your body when you are that thin is harder to convert into a body building metabolism than is the body of someone a few pounds overweight.

6

Wow. Well, my fiancée could tear you a new one on this topic. She’s a nutritionist researching the genetic causes of obesity. I submit to you, right off the bat, that the university would not have a graduate student researching genetic causes for obesity if some did not exist.

There exists a breed of lab rats called Zucker Rats. They are bred to have a genetic predisposition to eat too much, and their bodies are unable to tell when they are satiated. Even if you give them the “right” amount of food every meal all the time, as soon as they have access to more food, they blimp right up. Imagine a normal white rat swollen to the size of a softball. If you are missing that particular gene, you can exercise all you like, and you will still be fat.

I submit to you that there are any number of human genes that cause similar problems. Imbalances of heavy metals like cadmium or lead can cause thyroid problems which screw up your body’s ability to metabolize food properly, making you fat.

I don’t have a master’s degree in nutrition, but just from listening closely whenever she’s talking to her advisor about a paper over the phone, I know that there are literally hundreds of genetic and environmental causes for obesity; of those, it is simply unknown how many of them can and cannot be cured by diet and exercise.

As for attractiveness being caused by drive, you’re simply full of shit. I have several female friends who exercise aggressively and regularly. They can try all they like, but they will simply never be thin. Surely you’ve heard the phrase “a different body type”? Maybe you’ve noticed that a skinny girl with no hips is also not going to have very large breasts? They make those bras in all sizes for a reason: girls come in all sizes. No, drive does not cause attractiveness: quite the inverse. A person who is already attractive and has drive will get jobs in the visual media before someone who is unattractive will get that job, because looking good is part of the job requirement. If you have a hundred equally “driven” people (whatever the hell that means) and one job to offer, you’re going to make the hire based on other factors, and if their face is going to be used to sell product, then that’s one of the factors. Period.

So:

  1. Being thin is not just a matter of diet and exercise, and
  2. Media jobs that require pretty faces will only hire pretty faces, no matter how driven you are.

Oh, and while we’re at it, getting wealthy isn’t just a matter of drive, either. Talk to a sample of single mothers in Northeast DC, and then talk to a sample of mothers in Bethesda (20 minutes away). Find out which of them works harder, sweats blood, balances the family budget to within the penny… and then come back and spout some more bullshit about “drive”. It takes money to make money, and drive only gets you so far. Having parents who can buy you a car, or take time off to drive you to college interviews, or pay for your college so you can concentrate on your studies – that goes a pretty long way.

Just because it worked for you doesn’t mean you didn’t get lucky, too. Think about it.

7

You act like thin and healthy always go together. A woman can be perfectly healthy and not be thin. She can be thin and very unhealthy.

Example 1: When I was 18, I was the best backstroker in my county. I played soccer in the fall. I ran 5 miles every morning, and swam 3 hours a day, SEVEN days a week.

I was healthy. I was fit. I was attractive. Would you look at me and describe me as thin? Not on your life. Blame big boobs and a lot of muscle tone.

Example 2: A friend of mine from college was thin. She was beautiful, actually, and was offered a modeling contract. Was she healthy? Nope. She had serious, severe health problems.

Was she hard working and driven? Nope. Was I? Every damn day.

Education and skill sets needed to be, say a doctor are concrete and quantifiable. Beauty is subjective. You are the misguided one if you think people can overcome gentics, facial features, bone structure and a whole host of other things just by sheer willpower. Are you seriously telling me my face will be more symetrical if I go to the gym more?

Can I get Angelina Jolie’s body with hard work? Probably, if I’m not expected to be that tall. Can I get her lips or cheekbones? Not without plastic surgery. And there isn’t enough plastic surgery on earth to make me look like a waif.

If thinness was simply a by-product of success, wouldn’t you find thin women with average features all over Hollywood? Is it just coincidence that actors have beautiful faces?

Also, very few people would claim either Angelina Jolie or Britney Spears portray an unhealthy body image. Both of them look very healthy and fit. We are talking about the models plastered all over the cover of YM, or about the fragile women who look like a stiff breeze would break them in half (of the Lara Flynn Boyle variety). Are you seriously telling me that’s healthy, and not underweight?

8

Don’t scientist often times come up with theories that don’t pan out? Even if there are fat genes how would that explain why the levels of obesity have jumped in the United States over the past 50 years? Open up a high school yearbook from 1960 and one from 2004 and see which one has a higher percentage of obese kids. While I wouldn’t doubt that a genetic predisposition towards obesity exist I don’t think it explains why the nation is getting fatter.

Marc

9

You make a few valid points but have some faulty arguments and some very faulty premises; that “hollywood thin” is universally attractive and moreso that it is the only alternative to being obese.

I heard a terrific quote on the Simpsons I’ll try to paraphrase, “I wanted Hollywood ugly. Mary-Ann from Gilligan’s Island ugly not Cornelius from Plant of the Apes ugly.” In the movie The Truth About Cats and Dogs Jeanine Garafalo was cast as the ugly, fat girl in a reworking of Cyrano de Bergerac. She bemoans gaining 20lb in college she was never able to drop. Pardon me if I consider Hollywood’s idea of beauty to be profoundly fucked up if she is considered fat and ugly. There are countless other examples such as “Plumpy” in Love actually, a woman who was not overweight in the least but put down for having “legs the size of tree trunks.”

I used to have a mild crush on Jodie Foster until I saw her nude in Nell. I did not find her bony ribcage to be attractive in the least and correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t adult human females supposed to have breasts? Same is true of Renée Zellweger in Chicago. I guess I’m lazy because I thought she looked terrific in Bridget Jone’s Diary.

Now I like fat girls but for this discussion I’m not talking about them. My wife is a fat woman and God is she beautiful. I’m talking about women just the zaftig side of famine victim.

I’m also a tit man. I know it’s shocking to you but I am in fact a heterosexual man who likes women with large breasts. Perhaps it was faulty genes, contaminated drinking water or maybe I was dropped on my head several times as a child but that’s the way I am. I actually think it was from finding a December '68 issue of Playboy as a lad but that is another discussion. That fact makes me angry at hollywood for consistently portraying the actress with the largest breasts as stupid and/or slutty. Tell me I’m wrong about that.

10

Yeah, but the fact remains that the vast majority of people aren’t leptin receptor deficient like Zucker rats, and they’re still getting Type II diabetes in record numbers every year. In humans, just 50 or 100 years ago, virtually no one got Type II diabetes. Read that again: Virtually no one. Especially not children. It is now estimated that over 15 million people have it in the US alone. Ever seen a Zucker rat? Morbidly obese doesn’t begin to describe the appearance of these poor critters compared to their normal brethren; they essentially all develop type II diabetes eventually. To get a more normal mouse or rat to develop diabetes, you have to feed them a special formulation of rodent chow (developed at Jackson Labs…at least the kind I’m familiar with was) that’s almost half fat. The mice eat the same amount, but they get fatter, because the food is, well, high in fat. If they’re sedentary, some will develop type II diabetes. If they exercise (one of those little gerbil wheels will do), they rarely become diabetic. This model is actually more clinically relevant than the Zucker rat.

Why? Because the fact is most people who are overweight take in too many calories, and don’t exercise. It’s that simple. For an unlucky few, healthy diet and exercise will not help, but for the great majority of us, that’s precisely what is needed. Everybody’s got some little mutation that puts them at an enhanced risk for something. That’s not quite the same thing as saying most of us are congentially diseased, unless you want to lower the bar for that characterization to the point that almost no one could be described as “well”.

It’s great that people want to be sensitive, but the ugly truth of American excess is that we’re some of the most physically lazy and gluttonous people on the planet. We’re also the fattest, surprise, surprise. Was there a sudden rash in mutations giving what is becoming the majority of Americans a metabolic disorder? No. We just got richer, and life got easier; and now we’re paying for it, big time. Obesity is turning into a major public health issue, and will cost us billions upon billions every year if we don’t clean up our acts. That will not involve saying “I’m a mutant” and relying on biotech or pharma to give you a pill. It will involve getting off our duffs and eating right, the great majority of the time.

11

If there are genetic reasons for obesity (and I believe there are), we should be looking for them. Lets say 90% of the people who are obese are that way due to lifestyle factors, it doesn’t mean that 10% that are genetic shouldn’t be helped by science. And there you would have 10% of the obesity problem solved, which is still something.

Besides, imagine there being a test for the “obesity gene”. Then an obese person would know what they were dealing with-- and non-gene-bearers people couldn’t just use genetics as an excuse.

BTW, the reason I think there have to be some genetic causes is as that women in my Mom’s family have always been chubby. They were a middle class family who happened to be obessed with photgraphs. I’ve got pictures of my chubby foremothers going back to the 1870s. I was unable to overcome this even with a regulated diet and 4 hours of excercise per day.

12

Uh…that’s kind of the POINT of the movie (I don’t know why people don’t get this). She thinks she’s “ugly” because she doesn’t look like Uma Thurman (who I never really liked anyhow), not because she is actually hideously deformed. Because she’s ugly in her head, she dresses in a frumpy 90s grunge style that detracts from her appearance and has a crappy sarcastic attitude that turns people off. Much in the same way that Uma has a negative self image in Gataca because she “spends so much time looking for faults that’s all she sees”.

13

You’re thinking of the word “skinny”. Thin means healthy, attractive, with a healthy (meaning less than more) weight.

We don’t. You’re wrong. I don’t think that anyone on this board that complains about the “unhealthy and unrealistic thin body image perpetrated by the media” is talking about the Kate Moss waif look. They are complaining more about Charlise Theron and Angelina Jolie. Only unhealthy people think that the skeletal look is attractive.

Read my post before you reply, okay? Read it with an open mind. Consider the population of those in hollywood. More of them are active than the general population. More of them have to be active. So isn’t it then presumable that the general appearance of them will be healthier?

And I’m not saying that luck doesn’t have anything to do with success. But you are comparing apples to oranges. How many people in the world pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. America was built by such people. Did you watch the biography on Ben Franklin? He was incredably driven. Luck wasn’t what made him a success. His drive did. Given two families of similar background and similar financial status and luck, all things being equal except drive, the kid with more drive will be more successful. Period. REALLY think about it.

I say the same to you: read before you reply. Beautiful face: dime a dozen. When did I say that skinny = thin. Thin is healthy. Skinny isn’t. You people need to realize that the world thinks of thin the way that I do. Angelina Jolie is thin, not skinny. You sound like the olympic example I gave. If you read what I said then you would have realized that I said people should change their frame of mind. Try to be healthy. Attractiveness will follow.

And people I am talking about generic attractiveness, not specifics. Statistics. The chances that someone in a particular population will be thin. Hollywood population: more people are attractive because of who is in the population. They are active people. They have energy. If 1 out of 10 people is considered a 9 or better, then that’s a lohot of gorgeous faces. As I said earlier, pretty face, dime a dozen. How many people in Hollywood are NOT driven and totally successful? Not many. Hollywood is really really competitive. You have got to be driven to succeed there.

And one last remark:
Right on Loopydude.

14

Before we continue joking about a sudden mutation causing so many fat Americans we have to remember that a genetic predisposition is only one factor required in making a person with the gene obese. He also needs access to surplus food and a lifestyle without heavy physical work. These two or three factors (since the gene may not actually be necessary) have only come together in the past few decades for most Americans. One hundred years ago obesity was considered attractive because it showed you could afford extra extra food and didn’t have to burn it off through hard labor. Look at Charlie Chaplin’s usual leading lady, Edna Purviance. She was always portrayed as a delicate flower of femininity yet even at her most “waiflike” she was a good 140 lbs, edging up to 180 in her later films and looking like she could break Chaplin over her knee.

I am in total agreement that “healthy looking” often equals “attractive” and many Olympic athletes are, to me, hotter by virtue of their extreme good heath than I might have thought were they not so fit. Except for knotty calf muscles and stringy ligaments. :eek: Nothing against muscles, just excess, which really is a subtext in many of the posts here: Moderation is good and excess, be it fat or muscle or boniness, is bad.

15

Cite?

Please point me to the dictionary that is used by the rest of the world. Foolish me, I was using Websters.

I’ll give you 50 bucks if you can find the word healthy in that. The best you can get is lean, and that doesn’t mean healthy. Lean: “1 a : lacking or deficient in flesh b : containing little or no fat”. A healthy woman requires 12-20% body fat.

You can argue your interpretation of the word all you want, but if you want to have an honest debate and not just piss people off, being realistic about your terminology would be a good start.

I read your post. Right here you’re saying that people in the media are not attractive because the media wants attractive people, they are attractive because they are driven. I wanted to know why you were ignoring the factors making up beauty that no one change on their own.

If good faces gravitate to the media, why can you not entertain the possibility that good metabolisms do as well?

16

Again, you along with the rest of dopers are talking semantics, pointing more to dictionary definition than society. Ask a sampling of Americans if thin means unhealthy. Ask a sampling if thin means skinny or just not fat. You know the results will support my definition.

Sure they can. Why not? The media attracts the cream of the crop in society. So why should we not try to become more like them. They are role models for a reason.

17

prisoner6655321, the first step for you is to realize that you’re making a host of unsupported assertions (while making some possibly good points). Claiming that everyone or the majority of people view your definition of anything let alone attractiveness or thinness or healthiness without a cite is poor, sloppy argumentation and destroys any point you’re trying to make. The onus is on you to do the study and provide the results, not just to claim that you’re right and then insist that you’re right until someone posts an opposing study.

As far as Ben Franklin goes, he was driven, but the absolute kindest thing you could call his physique would be…er, portly.

18

As I said in my “common usage” of the word thin, it’s not a healthy connotation. But again, it’s just how I’m using the word. And ultimately the only difference of opinion we seem to have is semantical.

I just don’t think thin should mean “of a healthy weight” because it implies “too much” of something sort of like the term “fat” does.

It’s like, if you’re on thin ice that is a bad thing, because the ice isn’t thick enough. I know it’s a bad comparison but I just don’t like the word thin = healthy weight.

I have 8% body fat but I don’t want to be called thin, I’d consider that an insult. Muscular, built, even thick would be a complement to me as compared to the word thin.

19

No, I don’t know this. Provide a some kind of support, or shut up. I provided you with a cite for my opinion.

What do you want out of this discussion? An opportunity to bask in the sound of your own righteousness? Hey, whatever blows your dress up, but that’s not a debate.

What we are trying to do, while taking about statistics and semantics is actually find the logic to the problem. Why is a particular look attractive? Why are americans alarmingly overweight? Why do some people have unrealistic expectations? Why are people on TV starving themselves into a size 2? Why do some women react SO strongly just to the decriptor “thin”? Us dopers you so easily dismiss are actually trying to teach, and to learn. To understand each others’ arguments.

Your argument boils down to “This is the way it is! Just accept it!”. You can do better than that.

Are we doing a chicken and egg thing here? Either being in the media (via drive or whatever) makes people attractive, or people in the media are attractive because that is the standard. Which one is it?

20

It almost seems like some people are afraid that the fatties (meaning, anyone who is not thin) might start to believe they are not hideous toads. We can’t have that.

For the record, I don’t think “accepting” unhealthiness in anything (whether it be too thin, too fat, whatever) is good from a personal health point of view. However, you can understand that you need to lose/gain weight (for health reasons) without constantly being told how hideous you are, how you don’t measure up, how you’d better not think you’re attractive, how nobody else really think’s you’re attractive, etc. etc. Being told of the health risks of obesity is entirely different than being told how ugly everyone supposedly thinks you are.

As was exhaustively gone over in the previous “thin” thread, that more than a few people find a not-thin (or, slightly overweight to overweight) figure to be attractive. Perhaps not as attractive as thinner (but still attractive enough), perhaps as attractive as thinner, perhaps more attractive, in some cases. The percentage of people who find not-thinness to be attractive to some degree may not be the majority (I don’t know) but it’s not some teensy minorty not even worth mentioning, either. Far from that.

And furthermore, it takes NOTHING away from people who seem to only admire thinness (like the OP) that there are those out there who don’t think some overweight is hideous. It should be absolutely nothing to the OP, one way or the other. So what if some guys like a woman with more meat on her bones? They exist, they aren’t twisted or weird. There are more than a few of these people. Just go to the mall and look around—lots of not-terribly-thin people are paired up, and (horror of horrors) are procreating. (Okay, they aren’t actually procreating at the mall…) Apparently they must find each other attractive enough to engage in the act of procreation.