What’s worst, is that I actually used it correctly a few times…sloppy, sloppy.
What I find interesting about the whole thing is that so many of those celebrities or models who are supposed to be our current beauty ideal have dieted themselves down to a higher-than-ideal WHR because they’ve lost most of the fat off their hips and they aren’t curvy anymore. Most of those high-fashion models are that “H” shape that Yosemite was talking about and not the hourglass shape, and the same goes for a lot of the celebrities who are famous for their shrinking/disappearing acts, such as Courtney Cox Arquette (pre-baby), Renee Zellweger, and Lara Flynn Boyle.
I first started thinking about this issue when I saw “Before Sunrise” on DVD in preparation for “Before Sunset,” and realized how much sexier the main actress was 10 years ago when she had curves, pre-Hollywoodization.
That’s true, that’s true, and I kept on meaning to bring it up. There are a lot of women who are not at all “hippy” (either through dieting or because they’re just built that way) and they’re not considered unattractive—not at all. Also, a person who tends to be “Apple” shaped when they gain weight is probably going to not have much of a waistline definition (but great, great legs) no matter what weight they’re at. And they’re considered attractive too—look at their great legs! Then there’s another shape (sometimes an “H” shape, I think) where the woman has broader shoulders and a big, full bust, great legs, but also no waist definition, and they are considered attractive as well. When they gain weight they will retain relatively slim hips, big bust, and those great legs, but will get thick around the middle. (But this can be somewhat hidden with clothing.)
Also, we’ve got the “A” shape, which is narrow shoulders, small bust, but that coveted hip/waist ratio. Some of these women, if they are extreme cases, can have what amounts to a pretty ample behind, trim waist, but a minimal bustline. This isn’t exactly “hourglass,” since the top part of the hourglass isn’t there. These women are also attractive, also have their admirers (and their narrower shoulders/smaller bust can be camouflaged with smart fashion choices), but I’ve always wondered how they fit into the “hourglass” figure standard. They’ve got the hip/waist thing going on to perfection, but they are definitely not hourglass.
Good point.
While I agree that the “hourglass” figure is a nice thing to have (sewing fashion books and magazines always tell the “hourglass” girl that she has the easiest time of it when picking clothes to flatter her figure), these other body types can certainly be attractive too. The great legs and big bust thing especially. Why shouldn’t a man like that too?
That should read, “What’s worse,” Holmes, not “What’s worst,”. Mycroft would be amused.
Okay, was me. Perhaps I’ll go back to lurking…
I’m often baffled why a lot of thin celebrities are considered “hot”. Women like Teri Hatcher, Courteny Cox, and Sarah Jessica Parker do nothing for me, and it isn’t just because I’m a straight woman. If I were a man, I don’t think a view of their naked bodies would be all that arousing. Surely I’d find them attractive, but not sexually riveting. I think women look best if they are a little soft looking. Like Alicia Keyes, Beyonce, and Drew Barrymore (before her last diet).
As for the OP, women caught up in the whole “if I just lost 5 more lbs, then I’d be perfect” mindset tend not to view themselves as trying to be “extremely” thin. Like academic overacheivers, they are just trying to be above average, like the women on TV and in the movies, who always manage to look cute even while dressed in a pair of grandma’s sweatpants. I don’t think most women with the weight obsession (and I’m not talking about anorexics) are trying to look like Celine Dion. They are probably just trying to get down to a size that they feel is “safe”; that is far enough from fat that they don’t have to worry about being judged by the size of their thighs or tummy. They want to be able to bare their mid-drifts if they want without feeling self-conscious. They want to wear bikinis and feel cute, not sloppy. Unfortunately, too many people have negative things to say if God forbid, someone’s cute little fat roll peeks out from under their shirt. And a surprising amount of the comments come from other women.
I really think if the media presented more variety in healthy body types, women wouldn’t be so convinced that a convex tummy is so shameful and ugly. Every time we are shown a beach scene on TV or in the movies, too many of the women look like Bay Watch models. Fashion magazines rarely feature “regular” types; all the women are built like manequins. If the women we saw in the media had more attainable deminsions, pleasantly plump women would probably feel more beautiful and accepting of their bodies, and have more of the confidence that makes anyone–big, small, tall, or short–look attractive.
What’s really sad is that many girls aren’t aware that some of the super thin stay that way through time-honored techniques of smoking tobacco and doing heroin. Or worse yet, some are aware and copy those habits.
This is very much what I was trying to get at earlier. And there are a number of people out there (some of them on this board) who will happily tell the world you’re chubby with a BMI of 22. The only way a girl can feel confident that no one will think or call her fat is to be extremely thin.
Teri Hatcher bad, Drew Barrymore good? What color is the sky in your world?
It’s statements like these that leave me with the impression that thin and fit are unattainable pipe dreams impossible for mere mortal women. And yet, whenever I go out, I see countless thin, fit women. Hell, I personally know a bunch of thin, fit women, and several of them have had children. But to hear it in this thread, they don’t exist.
I think part of the pressure to be thin derives from the fact that millions of women are, in fact, thin.
That was a bit harsh, no?
But there is no basis for these conclusions, unless one subscribes to the clearly false and unsupported notion that attractiveness is a simply binary matter, i.e., one is either attractive or ugly. In fact, as mentioned repeatedly, there are a vast number of factors involved in attractiveness, which itself consists of a broad spectrum, and which is highly subjective to boot.
The research on WHR simply identifies a specific attribute that appears to be universally desirable – not what is undesirable. Any conclusions about attractiveness beyond what was already stated are due to idiosyncratic modes of thinking – probably biased by insecurity, body imaging issues, psychological trauma, etc. Which means I disagree with the following:
I’d like to note that I don’t see what I have to apologize for or “fix” following my comments in this thread. I think I’ve been quite fair and objective.
Then: should we abandon research into human sexuality and attractiveness simply because a set of people are predisposed to misinterpret the results or take offence at them? This research is honest work – much more honest than what would seem to be the cause the of problem, being the image of some very thin female bodies relentlessly promoted by mass media (and even then, consumers obviously share at least some of the responsibility).
I would rather suggest that the people who have such issues, who can only perceive a matter in binary terms, should come to grips with their problems and take a few statistics and science classes to learn what all this stuff really means. Science involves numbers, there’s no getting around that. What’s more, this doesn’t just apply to women’s bodies: for example, Pawloski, Dunbar & Lipowicz argue in Nature 403, 156 (13 January 2000) that Tall men have more reproductory success and there is an active selection for height in male partners by women (see here for a brief write-up). Should the short guys read this and hang themselves in mass despair? Of course not, this research doesn’t automatically make short guys unattractive.
An analogy is useful for the similarities between two situations, not its differences, and every analogy ultimately breaks down. Said that, anyone who buys into the weight loss industry thinking their investment is a one-off thing (i.e., a diet book, or a membership to a health club) is doing exactly the same thing as someone who buys a car and expects it to last an entire lifetime.
Losing weight is an issue of healthy lifestyle and life-long maintenance, and not everybody is able to commit to these things, particularly in our world of excess calories and unhealthy foods and lifestyles – not to mention wishful rationalizations and externalized loci of control. We are not just talking about yo-yo dieters and seekers of quick-fix solutions like Internet pills or Xenical. The reasons you have a high failure rate in long-term weight loss (not just dieting) include but are not limited to:
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insufficient discipline and commitment (e.g., working out and eating healthy for all of 2 weeks then relapsing into unhealthy habits)
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unrealistic expectations (results take months, not days and very rarely weeks, so the lack of positive reinforcement demoralizes subjects)
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incorrect techniques or techniques unsuitable for individual cases
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lack of sufficient information (e.g. buying skim milk instead of whole milk and then binging on ice cream that is made with the same fat removed from skim milk; thinking that “fat-free” means licence to eat huge amounts; sticking to a rigorous diet and exercise routine but consuming several alcoholic drinks daily, etc.)
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immersion in an environment that makes it extremely difficult to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle, where calories are in gross excess and exercise is distinctly lacking
Not everyone who loses weight gains it back. The majority of people do, true, but because of flawed methodology or interruption of a regime, not because of some automatic fault in the system. As with all things, there are good approaches and bad approaches: crash dieting is bad, the Atkins diet is cretinous, the Beverly Hills diet from a few decades ago and others like it are a joke; but exercising more is good, limiting your caloric intake is good, eating as little trans and saturated fats as possible is good.
And for the seriously obese there are even real quick-fix options such as gastric bypass surgery (which, incidentally, is always accompanied by an exercise regime). Liposuction is a form of body countouring and not a weight loss method, so it does not count.
And yet in this industry there are people who do achieve a healthy weight and maintain it, and there are those who maintain a healthy weight without becoming overweight, which suggests the problem is more with the factors I bulletted above (and others) than with the weight loss industry itself – although, and this is a big although, I agree more regulation and control is needed to remove the scams and quick fixes from circulation. In fact, I’d like to flag up the link you provided earlier, in the hope that everyone reads it: 10 things the diet industry doesn’t want you to know.
Losing weight doesn’t kill you, generally speaking (unless you dabble with ephedra-based products and similar crap); it is excess fat and resulting complications that kill you. In fact, to use your tobacco industry example, being obese is as or more harmful as being a smoker. And consider that in some cultures African and Middle Eastern cultures women are fattened up into the obesity range in the name of beauty; now that is unhealthy, whether or not one finds it attractive.
At some stage, you will simply have to recognize that for some people anything heavier than an ambulating skeleton is “fat”. A BMI of 22 cannot under sane circumstances be considered fat. It is perhaps a tad above what some research suggests is the preferred BMI (20) and more considerably above fahsion model BMI (18) but it is not fat.
I once stumbled across a web page I will never forget as long as I live. There was a picture of an extremely thin woman in her underwear, concentration-camp thin, which was a shame because it was obvious this chick might have been attractive at a healthy weight. There were two arrows: the first pointed to her thigh, the second to her shin. The text next to the arrows read: “when this [arrow one] is the same size as this [arrow 2] that equals true beauty”.
Some people are just sick in their expectations. That doesn’t mean everyone is. Do you feel you have to please the sickos?
I haven’t seen Teri Hatcher really recently, but speaking for myself, I remember a time (old “MacGyver” episodes) when she was a tiny bit plumper, and she was so gorgeous it wasn’t even funny. During “Lois and Clark” she was also gorgeous. She’s older now, and she’s still beautiful. But also, she’s thinner than she was back during her “Lois” and “MacGyver” days. I don’t think that the thin-thin look is one that she’s naturally supposed to be at, and I think it makes her look older than she should. I don’t think that her body really wants to be that thin. (This is just my flea-bitten opinion, naturally.) There was absolutely nothing wrong with how she looked before. She was not fat, she was not super-thin, and she was one of the most gorgeous creatures I’d ever seen.
They exist, because either their bodies are predisposed to be that way, or because they work, sweat blood to get that way, or they work moderately hard to get that way. As I’ve mentioned before, women come in different body “types” (“H”, “Apple,” etc.) and if you’re one type, you’re one type. If you are predisposed to have a wider behind and narrower shoulders, that’s what you’re going to have. If you are predisposed to have a thick middle and slender hips, that’s what you’re going to have. And if you are predisposed to not be naturally lithe and slim, you’re going to have to sweat bullets to force your body to get that way. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect women to be a certain way if it’s going to be torture. If it’s something that doesn’t come too terribly hard for certain women, that’s different. But if it’s not, then they shouldn’t be held to that standard. Why wouldn’t “not really overweight” or “curvy but not unhealthily fat” be sufficient for such women?
For instance, my mom is an “H” shape (with a little more bust than some “H” shapes). She has also been pretty active for most of her life. When she was working, she used to get up early and walk up to 8 miles to work every morning, “just because” she liked to do it. (She had a lot of hyper energy she needed to work off, apparently.) She certainly got enough exercise, and she was (and is) a health food nut.
She has never been slender, though. She’s “average” most of the time, and when she gains weight, it’s around her middle. She has never, as long as I can remember, looked really fat. Chubby, maybe, but never obese. Not even close. She’s about 5’5" and ranges from about 145-175 lbs. Nobody would ever guess that she weighed that much.
There have been times when she dieted and tried to get below 145 lbs., and people started to tell her that she looked gaunt and ill. She looked like crap when she got down under a certain weight. Her body is not meant to be really thin.
So what is she supposed to do? If 8 miles a day walking isn’t enough to make her slender and thin, what would be enough? And is it reasonable to expect her to be thin, even when her attempts to do so have made her feel (and look) like crap?
Yes, and some men are born into wealthier families with more resources, and some men are born with an innate drive of ambition to earn money. If you are predisposed to become wealthy, that’s what you’ll become. And if you are predisposed to not become wealthy, you’re going to have to sweat bullets to force your career to get in high gear. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect men to be a certain way if it’s going to be torture. If it’s something that doesn’t come too terribly hard for certain men, that’s different. But if it’s not, then they shouldn’t be held to that standard. Why wouldn’t “not really well off” or “struggling but not poverty stricken” be sufficient for such men?
The answer, of course, is that it is sufficient. But it’s not an ideal. All people are better off striving to be the best that they can. The term “best” is loaded, however, as not all men define their worth by the thickness of their wallets, and in the same vein, not all women define their worth by the thickness of their thighs.
What’s your point? Is it to forever trot out anecdote after anecdote showing that overweight women are good, and better yet, they aren’t even really overweight in the eyes of the enlightened? Could you possibly, just once, agree that thinner is healthier, and in general looks better? Is it so hard to admit that? Without having to add the caveat that you know someone who looks better when they are more overweight? Immediately followed by the explanation showing how they aren’t even really overweight except in the eyes of an unfair society, of course.
There’s a whole lot of hand wringing going on in here. I get your “bigger is better” agenda in the efforts to help women’s self-esteen issues. But the other side of that coin is the very real obesity epidemic that is in part being fueled by the “bigger is better” backlash to heroin sheik. The craziness about that backlash is that precious few people – both men and women – find heroin sheik to be attractive, and yet the backlash persists. To what result? Record obesity rates and acceptance of unhealthy bodies as every bit as good as healthy bodies.
I say no more, let us open our eyes and address psychological disorders as psychological disorders, and obesity as a health risk. “Bigger is better” only until one has a heart attack, at which point “thin is in”. But when one becomes body-dismorphic, that’s not an “isn’t society so evil for favoring thinness” issue, that’s a psychological disorder that merits treatment.
Who is the Heroin Sheikh? Must be a new wrestler on the scene.
I too, as I mentioned earlier, think this trend to trumpet “bigger is beautiful” is a dangerously unhealthy one, and evidence to that effect has been provided throughout this thread. It’s OK to accept yourself as you are, whatever you are, as opposed to developing self-hatred because you don’t match the narrow and unrealistic standard communicated by fashion and television. But it is also OK to admit that a certain lifestyle or weight 1) puts you at risk of a number of health problems and 2) may impact your attractiveness (in part, it is strongly suspected by some evolutionary psychologists and other scientists, because it impacts your health).
Some people – men and women – are simply not genetically predisposed to fit into certain bodytype images. Some people have serious glandular disorders they must struggle with. That still doesn’t change the fact that two thirds of Americans are overweight, one third are obese, life expectancy for the current generation seems likely to be lower than the previous one for the first time in history, etc., etc.
Two thirds of Americans are NOT genetically or glandularly predisposed to be overweight, the majority are simply taking in way too many calories and exercising too little – yet only about 9% of the fattest country on Earth admit they have to lose weight. This suggests some major denial is taking place, which I think is the thrust ellis dee makes somewhat more roughly than was perhaps needed. I suggest it’s ultimately more useful to admit one is overweight than to explicitly love oneself for being big; it is better to try to lose some weight in an intelligent and realistic fashion rather than become complacent and tell oneself that large rolls of flab are the way “a real woman” is supposed to look, or to obsess about the issue and end up crash-dieting and developing eating disorders. Quite aside from issues of attractiveness, this is a matter of simple health. if you feel you have an issue, yYour doctor --if you have a good one-- is your friend, ask for his/her opinion first, then take it from there.
And if you’ve seen the comedy Dodgeball, which I highly recommend, ponder on the differences between the TV advertisments for GloboGym and Average Joe’s.
That’s the whole point Abe, we have a generation of women who see beauty in binary terms. If I have blonde hair, if i have blue eyes, if I have big breasts. I would be beautiful. Would it suprise you hear that women are having their pelvis bone shaved into order to create a WHR of exactly 0.7? You may know that attactiveness is a broad spectrum, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the most people don’t. The real world over-rides statistical data and needs to be dealt with.
Disagree with what? That some people have such low self-esteem in their body, that they can’t believe that any one would acutally find them attractive?
The “fix” I was referring to was the culture of self-loathing and I’m not asking you to apologize for anything, just to realize that when numbers are tossed out saying that 0.7 is attractive and 0.9 was considered less attractive; tossing a “generally speaking” doesn’t do much for the person who’s struggling with a WHR of 1.0. Especially as you’ve stated that WHR is only one part of human attractiveness and it’s value is questioned:
More recently Tovée et al., (1998) used real pictures of women dressed identically manipulated to control for WHR and body mass index (BMI) and argued that the latter index may be the most important factor in determining attractiveness. Participants viewed all of the stimuli first, and then rated them for attractiveness on the second run through. They found that small alterations in BMI had a large influence on attractiveness and this was of greater impact than alterations in WHR.
This result is contrary to previous findings and the authors argued that the line figures used in other studies are the reason. Within each series BMI is supposedly held constant and WHR is varied but in fact apparent BMI is altered because WHR is manipulated by altering the width of the torso around the waist. BMI is also an honest signal as it is closely correlated with health and fertility (a BMI of around 19 is associated with better health and higher reproductive capability) and lower and higher values with reduced health and reproductive capability. *
Of course not, but be honest with what results mean and not distill it to a generalization that can mean anything. What was the one of reasons why the lower WHR and Higher WHR were considered less attractive?
In a follow-up study, older participants aged 30-60 carried out the same procedure and produced the same ratings, overall males and females rated the figure of normal weight with the WHR of 0.7 (N7) as being attractive, youthful, healthy, and reproductively capable. Interestingly, the underweight figure with a WHR of 0.7 (U7) whilst being rated as the most youthful, was not rated as being the most attractive or reproductively capable. This is perhaps because this figure is perceived as being sexually immature. WHR could magnify the sexual attractiveness of the ‘hourglass figure’ - shapely breasts and broad hips set against a narrow waist. A high WHR may give off warning signals of low reproductive value and high disease risk, but may also give the appearance of pregnancy.
Bolding mine. Do you see the difference? WHR doesn’t necessary mean ‘unhealthy’, it can just as easily mean different stages in a woman’s sexual availability…especially considering the subjects were given only line drawings to view. The statistical data, the science hasn’t changed; but the conclusions on attractiveness can. Low WHR=Young Girl. High WHR=Pregnant Woman. If the data is flawed, then it’s flaws need to be pointed out and alternate reasons for looking at the data differently. This is the main problem I have with using statistical data, when dealing with issues that by nature can’t be distilled into neat little compartments:
** Furnham et al., (1997) pointed out that there are problems with the ranking measures used in the previous studies. In their study participants were asked to rate each figure on a 7-point bipolar scale. Their results echoed those of the previous studies as normal weight males and females were judged as being most attractive and the female figures with a WHR of 0.7 were thought of as being the most attractive. However, they did not find that the figures with a WHR of 0.7 were considered to be more healthy or more youthful, or that figures with a high WHR were considered as being more unhealthy which contradicts previous findings. They admitted that a big problem with such studies was the nature of the stimuli - line drawings, and in particular the male figures were felt to be particularly unrealistic. ** http://psych.unn.ac.uk/users/nick/EPlec07.htm
Statistics isn’t science, when it comes to human interactions; it’s guesswork and in the value of WHR questionable science at that. I point again to The British ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli; *“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics” *and the burden of clearly explaining the data to the layman is on the person using statistical data.
Making an analogy isn’t a license to ignore how situations happen in the real world. No car manufactuer promises that if you buy his car, you’ll never need another; the Diet industry does just that…knowing full well as you do, that 90% of their customers,regardless of the reasons will repeat the process. Does your analogy extend to food, to water, to the weather? How many people expect the Sun not to set or night not to fall? Can I use those as analogies to dispute the Fact that 5%-10% of people repeat their weight-loss programs and most of the money that funds it is from those same people?
This isn’t about obesity and no one’s saying that’s obesity is good. I didn’t say that losing weight in and of itself kills people; the ‘industry’ does, the process does. It’s a process that can create obesity. Obesity which the side effect from losing weight improperly. Which 90% of people trying to lose weight do. They lose 10, gain 20; lose the 20, gain 40 and are slowly killing themselves. The majority of people will fail in their rate loss program. That’s a fact. The majority of them will gain more weight as a direct result of that weight loss program. That’s fact. For one who values statistics, you seem to minimize that one. One that you and the weight loss industry is aware of. It doesn’t matter what the cause is, they will fail and gain more weight.
It’s like the tabacco industry pointing the the people who’ve smoked for 50 years and didn’t get cancer as proof that their product is generally safe, while ignoring the millions that died from it.
I think Ellis meant heroin chic, no?
WHAT?
You’re kidding, right?
I mean, if someone wants to have plastic surgery just for vanity that’s their business, but having your BONE CUT? Pretty extreme.
Please tell me you were joking.
Blah blah blah. Genetic predisposition is a whole 'nothing kettle of fish.
That’s true, actually. What’s wrong with being middle class? Why does everyone have to strive to be rich?
And why can’t women strive to look “average” or “not fat” if that’s what works for them? Or should people like my mom have to starve herself and feel like crap all the time in order to “be the best”?
Where the HELL have I said that? Would it be back several posts, when I wrote this to msmith?
Yes, of COURSE I KNOW that thinner is considered more attractive. My gosh, do you think I’m living under a rock? Do you think any of us are?
Well, since I have already admitted it several times, I don’t think there’s any need to keep doing it, just 'cause you won’t read what I’ve read.
No, actually, “bigger is better” isn’t exactly what I’m saying. I’m saying that “bigger isn’t necessarily hideous.” A big—but not unhealthily overweight—person isn’t hideous either, at least not to lot (but I won’t say all) people. Even a big girl has her admirers, as we have been discussing. These comments were in direct response (as holmes and others have been discussing) to those on this thread who made blanket statements like, “hardly any man finds larger women attractive.”
That’s why this discussion strayed in the direction that it did. Because some here (and I’m guessing that includes you?) cannot fathom that not only are smaller, thinner girls considered attractive, but amazingly enough, some of the bigger ones are considered attractive (by some men). It isn’t as if no men, or just the whacked-out fat-fetishists, find bigger girls attractive. And it isn’t that some of these “big” girls are all that big (re: the models I linked to earlier). That was the main point, but I guess the last few pages discussing this wasn’t enough to get through.
I was blowing smoke…but would you believe it?
Nope. I’ve never had trouble getting whatever guy I wanted despite have never, ever been described as “thin”. (Of course, I’ll never need implants, either). Perhaps it was the culture or area I was raised in-- heavily black & hispanic, with not much TV time-- but I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with my body.
I’m simply answering the OP’s question, why do women wish to be extremely thin. Because many women are sensitive, and often those sickos are the loudest, most unforgiving voices.