I was watching the simpsons this weekend and it touched on the obesession with women trying to be as skinny as possible. WHy do some women desire to look like this? By that I mean, what is their primary motive to attaining extreme levels of thinness? Is it to be desirable to men or because the culture they come from says that that is what a desirable woman looks like or is there some other reason?
I have never really understood or believed the mentality that they do it to make men like them as not many men I know find uber skinny women more attractive than the ones 20-30 lbs heavier, and I assumed women knew that fact but still tried to attain that look. So I figure there must be some motive other than making men find them attractive. If so what is it? It is just peer pressure, plain and simple?
That said, I am not thin, and never will be. IME, most of the men who claimed to “prefer” skeletal women had other issues as well. They weren’t looking for a woman, they were looking for a fantasy ideal, a la the Stepford Wives.
WAG, but i think some got it drummed into them by the media. repeatedly. for 20 minutes.
so some want to look as good as those models they see (for their own sake), where apparently it is easier to look good in front of the camera if you are thin.
Anorexic women don’t want to be really thin. They just want to be thin and attractive.
For those who saw the episode of the Simpsons referenced in the OP, do you remember the scene where Lisa looked into the mirror and saw herself as really fat? That’s what anorexia nervosa is all about. Not the desire to be thin.
My theory. They don’t want to grow up. They want to stay the way they looked when they were teenagers. And there are enough older men who are attracted to young teenage girls; but know it is taboo to seek them out; that will pursue these ultra thin women for a fantasy fulfullment. Problem is these same men will return to normaly shaped women after the fantasy aspect is gone; further screwing up these woman’s minds. Just a theory.
I don’t know. I was really thing growing up.
(born in 58)
I was 5’6" at age 13 and about 70 lbs. When I graduated I was 5’11" and 110.
No one found it attractive and I certainly didn’t want to be that thin.
I do think the ideal of female beauty changes on a regular basis, so eventually heavy will be in.
How about the Olson twins. Perhaps they are afraid of growing up. There teenage years were quite profitable for them and I could see how they wouldn’t want to leave those years behind.
Either that, or they just heavily into cocaine. :wally
And more importantly, why don’t they like it when we’re huge lazy lardbags?
Seriously though, I think it’s a perception thing. People seek to fill the roles that are presented to them. They try to fit in. If the magic glowbox is constantly showing anorexic women, women are going to get it into their heads that thin is attractive. IF people are constantly told on all state-permitted media that Jews bake the blood of Muslim children into their matzo, they’re going to be antisemitic. It’s basic social conditioning. The rules that worked for Goebbels work just as well for selling cars and diet books, it’s just that people don’t watch out for them so much.
It’s fashion, of a sort. Time was, only the wealthy could be fat, so fat was a status symbol. It’s now quite easy in our society to get more than enough calories. In fact it’s cheaper since you can fill up on fatty and starchy food quite cheaply. Very hard-working people often have jobs that don’t require a lot of energy expenditure.
Just a WAG, but I think that the problem is the fashion industry. The fashion industry is by and large not controlled by people who are attracted to women’s shapes. Most designers are either gay men or straight women. Beyond that, they are urban gay men and straight women, who come from higher-income backgrounds (why else could they afford to go to design school?). People in urban areas who have really cosmopolitan backgrounds tend to be skinnier and more obsessed with their weight. The ignorance of the average body type of women carries over into their designs. Because these people grew up around people who are generally skinnier, they draw that into their designs. That’s also why so many models are ugly as well as skinny–the people who hire them don’t find any women attractive, so they choose them based on previous models, thinking that’s what people like. The cycle perpetuates itself.
So the average woman, when she goes into a store or turns on the television, sees all kinds of pictures of skinny women. She’s told by the fashion elite, people who aren’t attracted to women at all and whose exposure to the female sex is that of wafer-thin city women, that fourteen is a husky size. So she drops weight any way she can, to get into the attractive clothes that New York and Paris say she should wear. All the cute clothes are in the tiny sizes because that’s who designers really design for–the mythical cosmopolitan lady with legs like a gazelle and no breasts. If people who were really attracted to the female form (instead of just admiring it objectively) had some input to the industry, I think it would be a lot different. However, when you’ve got people who can’t judge female beauty designing for people who can’t judge female beauty, you can’t be surprised when people who are attracted to women find the results a little flat.
Personally, I like a little more junk in the trunk, and I think most models look nasty. I’m also a size ten petite, not really large, but even I have problems finding clothes in my size, most of the really cute stuff is sized six or smaller. (And there’s almost no clothes in the petite cut, further reinforcing my theory that designers only care about women with gazelle legs.) At many stores, anyone over a size twelve has to shop in the plus-sized section. The fashion industry may not be the only reason women develop eating disorders, but I have a hard time believing that women want to become bone-skinny because they believe it’s attractive. Eating disorders were almost unknown until the twentieth century.
(I realize on preview that this may come off as somewhat homophobic, however that is not my intent. Apologies in advance.)
