Women: you have become sausage shaped. Stop Eating Now.

And about how "fashion" is probably not a good way of pushing for dietary/health practises changes. "Fashion" has certainly caused more eating disorders than it has ever helped.

But this being ILX, I'm not very hopeful about the likelihood of us having a serious discussion of a sensitive issue.

uh, didn't they use corsets and girdles alot back then? back then really big hips and breasts seemed rather common, with oddly tiny waists.

better sausages than toothpicks.

Also, the English are just getting bigger. Something to do with The War, I suppose? (if in doubt, always blame The War. And rationing.)

Yes.

WTF?

I dunno, people *have* become fatter. But like Kate says fat distributes itself differently depending on the person and maybe the food? My fat goes to my legs, not so much to my bum. Or so I'd like to think. hah.

Does this mean that next the longevity gap between men and women will be closing as we start dropping dead of heart attacks and other stress based disease?

So women, if you want a waist, stop eating donuts and white bread and baked potatoes etc.

Women are quickly catching men up when it comes to heart disease, but it's not noticeable in society because women are protected by hormones until the menopause so they don't drop dead at an early age from heart attacks like men do.

-- el sabor de gene (yn...), September 21st, 2005.

people who think saying 'women come in all shapes and sizes, ewwwww but not skinny' wind me up. back in '51 we still had rationing, and people didn't eat *quite* as much sugar as they do now. i need stats before i say it's all down to the girdle.

and i think you're going to encounter "ewwwww but not skinny" because we've been force-fed the idea that rail thin is attractive for the past three or four decades.

ha! that's the first thing i thought too: by default, i've got that girlish waist i've always wanted!

-- el sabor de gene (yn...), September 21st, 2005.

PUNNED.

seriously though, is it really a case of forceful imposition? we have been programmed to find thin (not necessarily rail-thin) sexy, you think?

Plus housework was a incredibly physically demanding task in those days - think of having to beat carpets, do heaps of washing (and drying) by hand, plus all the usual scrubbing + cleaning + polishing with no labour saving devices at all! Plus a lot of women had to work as well!

well, yes: what is? i'd wager our notions of sexiness will be more complex than yin-social yang-biological, or whatever. clearly people do find not-thin sexy, also. perhaps they have seen through the lies. or perhaps advertising doesn't actually brainwash us as much as people think.

Yeah. I'm not sure why there'd be a sinister conspiracy to make people consume less.

Eh?

the preference AMONG NON-MEDIA-INUNDATED TRIBESMEN, that is, kate; that doens't make 'proportion' the be-all end-all, just another preference.

If women see from the press that thin is in, they assume that thin is what men find attractive, whereas in practice it doesn't make a jot of a difference, every man has his own idea of what attracts him?

(OK, I guess I do understand it, that is why I bought indie records. But in this particular area it seems weird.)

Human beings, however, can be programmed to find anything from pointy noses to latex suits and even inanimate objects like shoes "sexy" so it doesn't really matter.

I'd be interested to hear the views of non-media-inundated tribeslesbians too.

Depends on how you define "thin" - just to complicate matters further

However, the health concern things bother me a lot more than worrying about whether my specific waist/hip ratio is of a childbearing standards according to tribesmen or latex fetishists anyway.

Why don't we have articles about men becoming sausage shaped if their waists are shooting up just as quickly?

roxy my mom still does that stuff today - e.g. eating ONE bite of something and then acting like she's being a pig.

because it's not a new problem i guess. And they're shooting up in proportion, as opposed to having a drastic change in shape which has huge health implications

You're thinking of Peperami.

(I wish this was true)

(Though honestly, even though I used to almost fetishise extremely thin men, going out with a couple of guys with eating disorders really put me off it, and now I actually seem to be preferring my men slightly plumper if Jared Harris and Damien Hirst and Boris Johnson are anything to go by. Oh, what a thing it is to get old... and start fancying middle aged men.)

but the impression i get is that there are loads of men out there not even overweight who are not getting any action ever, for various reasons - not sure if this is because they outnumber women, social or media expectations or whatever.

with the current manufacturing of bigger clothing, social acceptance of being overweight, and abundance of heavily processed, sugary foods, is it any wonder? food is like our number one bonding method--at least here, in america--last week my work had an ice cream social, brought in like 5 GALLONS of ice cream, about 20 different toppings, and told us to go crazy. Some people filled up huge MIXING BOWLS, and then went back for seconds!

If men aren't getting laid, it's coz they're assholes.

[/Calumnist reductionism]

Wow, things were SO MUCH BETTER in the old days, huh?

Sigh. grrrrr. Don't know which.

i suppose with men you had to be considerably bigger before the insults became incessant, but this was certainly the case for the tubbier guys i went to school with.

but the next stage is not, 'fuck the media i will treat my body exactly as i please' -- which is just as abusive and, in the long run, dysfunctional.

xpost

because men have always been sausage-shaped (as far as the article's definition goes), whereas women "traditionally" go in at the waist etc.

I have very slight build, narrow shoulders and a 23 inch waist. If I weigh more than eight stone my shape goes VERY lightbulb (helpfully, my mom refers to this as 'bubble butt') because it seems nothing makes my waist expand beyond 24 inches. A sedentary lifestyle does not make me happy and I eat well.

In some cases it is true. Gimme me my beefcake with a nice, well-distributed amount of marbling.

YES. especially the latter, in my experience.

Surely one of the reasons that slim people are generally found more attractive now is because thinness frequently denotes success, in terms of acquiring capital and rising up the class food chain. In the UK, the relationship between obesity and class is particularly insidious.

That's why when i meet middle-class overweight people I readily assume that they're simply over-indulgent and lazy and have absolutely no time for (scientifically disproven) whines about genetic predispositions.

It's kind of a self fulfilling spiral in that way. "I will never look that way" leads to comfort eating leads to looking even less that way. And the defiant "I refuse to live up to society's standards".

There are many different kinds of eating disorders, and they have complex causes.

1) eating issues and fashion (this one)
2) Kate Moss and her cocaine habit (how else can a model preserve that kind of physique?)
3) an anonymous post about a (female) partner's lack of libido

Is it just my brain that is linking these three topics together. My long-term problem with 3 was very much linked into lots of the issues raised in 1. (Weight gain, stress, etc. destroying my libido and seriously affecting a relationship.)

"Self esteem issues raised by the constant comparing of self (non-skinny) to media images (extremely skinny) often contribute to OVER-eating disorders."

yes, of course they do, but, as these kind of images are NOT GOING TO GO AWAY, maybe it's time for people to become more media savvy (which is itself a natural incremental process), decode those images and cast themselves in less of a passive role.

Why aren't they?

I must admit that part of my schadenfreude at the downfall of Kate Moss is the whole thing of "NO WONDER SHE'S SO SKINNY - FREAKING COKEHEAD" and I would love to see some kind of fashion backlash. Probably won't happen, but who knows.

My reaction is to consume less of the media, especially fashion media. But I wasn't savvy enough to know to do that when I was 15.

my 5'9" mother topped the scales at 114lbs when she was in high school/college (whole, extra-large pizzas were her preferred snack) and didn't go above 130 until she had to go on medication in her late 30s. and she did it all without cocaine use*!

Should media studies and "The Media (and its portrayal of women) is bad for you and your body image, ignore it" classes start at around puberty? Maybe before?

x-post

because, it's the nature of mass media culture to always fetishise a commerically exploitable ideal that the weakest members of society will swallow wholesale. No government, beyond one that is more interventionist than anything currently seen in the Western world, can do much about this.

It aint necessarily right, but that's the nature of the beast and the best way of combating it is thru individuals smartening up and not waiting for an imaginary cavalry to come to the rescue.

Debates that are worth seeking government intervention over include things like school meals, correct labelling of food etc, but the formenting of tastes thru the mass media is gonna remain out of bounds.

I just wanted to point out that similar studies/experiments with media-inundated college men have yielded similar results. You should know better than this!

Also cocaine isn't necessarily a slimming drug. I believe it was sexyDancer who pointed out that it makes you drink 20x more than you'd have drank otherwise, which leads to bloating...I'm not touching that Kate Moss trainwreck with a ten foot pole because of how pissed off that thread actualy made me but I'll make the point here. I weighed 35-40lbs more as a cokehead than I do now.

Is it? She won't find any of that in New York, of course.

Absolutely. They should also be accompanied by nutrition classes and strictly enforced PE.

Surely they were thinner in the 50s cos they had to run round all day in the freezing cold by way of getting an education.

xpost to ally

ah, okay. cambridge student zadie smith who got andrew wylie as agent aged 20 hates aspiration. riight.

kate: people get fucked up by their families and no-one proposes to ban families or have classes at school about how to deal. maybe they should, though.

(The thinnest I've ever been is during times when I was abusing drugs. Equating thinness and healthiness is badness. I'm just interested in how this is happening, that overweight = unhealthy is being twisted when underweight = just as unhealthy.)

I think that child rearing and basic parenting skills SHOULD be taught at schools. Starting *way* before puberty. But that's another story.

that's just not true. obviously, if you're comparing the extremes - full-scale obesity and anorexia - that theory might hold water. However, being 2 stone over your ideal weight (if you take that in terms of a weight/height calculated bmi) is likely to put a lot more strain on your heart and blood pressure than being 2 stone under.

despite her habits, i doubt kate moss' weight would figure her as being dangerously unhealthy in terms of bmi. she's a naturally small girl as well as, i assume, eating very little.

It does need frequently restating that being overweight is not a good thing. as drinking or smoking heavily are not good things. it is of course your own choice and a matter for the private, not the public, sphere but the blanket condemnations of a media which is popularly regulated (in the sense that people have to buy these images for them to perpetuate themselves)for privileging thin over fat ignores some fairly basic issues.

Short shameful confession: Since the gossip about Moss/Doherty's DRUG-FUELED relationship SHOCKAH began, the nastier parts of my mind have been hoping that she would die of an overdose.

my 5'9" mother topped the scales at 114lbs when she was in high school/college

I don't mean to ascribe drug habits to your mother, but just how available were amphetamine diet pills during the 1950s and 60s?

I AM 5'8 AND JUST BREAK 100LBS.

SOME PEOPLE ARE REALLY THIN WITHOUT HELP OF DRUGS.

OVER AND OUT.

I think she meant aspirational in relation to popular culture rather than the elevated socio-literary circles which she moves in. All in all, it would be better if people aspired to write fiction more than they aspired to be on celebrity love island IMHO but that view's obviously deeply susceptible to being labelled classist.

i had friend house on speed dial. if the situation had remained thus, i would have ended up one of those people who needs hoisting (like a grand piano) to get out of the house.

xpost to j.lu - i'm sure you didn't mean it in that way, but that's an insulting question and absolutely off-base in her case.

(Also, I love how lots of people who are "naturally thin" when they are younger plump out in middle age at a far greater rate than those who have struggled with "weight problems" their whole lives.)

((Yes, this is a horrible post, but it's my prejudices coming out here.))

what the fuck?

I don't know that this is true at all - look at me!

http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_pictures/life/vi-explo.jpg

is it because you is fat? :(

Tom otm. They're all almost identical.

Kate OTM.

READ THE FINE PRINT, PLEASE:

(Though honestly, even though I used to almost fetishise extremely thin men, going out with a couple of guys with eating disorders really put me off it, and now I actually seem to be preferring my men slightly plumper if Jared Harris and Damien Hirst and Boris Johnson are anything to go by. Oh, what a thing it is to get old... and start fancying middle aged men.)

Back at the Zadie intersection: IIRC the whole thing happened quickly - publisher was interested on the basis of one short story, comp-school classmate's mum in NW London said to get an agent she knew (Wylie never became the agent; it's a woman at AP Watt who used to 'scout' for him). Both Z and the 'first' publisher - not to mention her current publisher - have all told me the same independently. Barbarian and NRQ need to be a bit less arch with what looks like pointless professional jealousy.

Weight gain in middle age = increase in alcohol consumption because we can afford it more, more sedentary lifestyle possibly because of cars, less going out in the evenings.

i find professional jealousy extremely self-sustaining thank you.

Given that, i thing that Z is, broadly, A Good Thing and have liked her in her interviews.

xpost

people should know their station; can't all write white teeth.

i think she was talking about aspiring towards celebrity lifestyles etc.

xp

However, I do know that they only times I've ever been an "ideal weight" for people my height has been during periods of extreme poverty or drug dependence.

So I'm really not sure what to make of any of it. It hasn't changed with age, though it's harder to exercise now I'm middle aged and my joints don't work the way they should.

x-post

actually, being a vegetarian, I have *better* eating habits than many people I know, except for maybe a problem with portion control).

vegetarian isn't a byword for healthy! you can eat utter bollocks as a vegetarian and be totally fat as a result

okay yeah food is political; perhaps this is a bit de trop.

10000 NEW ANSWERS

If only we all had your willpower.

Unfortunately, being rail thin doesn't work in my favour as I'm a man.

it's a combination of red stripe and lack of willpower that compels me to visit them; not their intrinsic presence.

Well, why do we need an 'excuse'? I'm overweight because I think the pleasures of an idle, high-consumption life are worth the health risks. That's not the same as "wanting to be overweight" though, it's just an acceptance of the costs of a particular lifestyle.

xpost I have given up fried chicken, I felt guilty about the battery hens, if someone could prove that hops felt pain when they're brewed I'd lose 5 stone in the next year.

And that's just ridiculous.

The point is, there's so little choice when you come out of the pub on a Friday night or whatever, such is their dominance compounded by impatience, laziness and the inconvenience of cooking at home after pubbage.

only solution is to move to southern europe.

my local hobgoblin has now started serving 'authentic mexican cuisine' however, which is, very surprisingly, not that bad tho i doubt it's very healthy either.

you still get carded.

The main problem is 1. I am currently aiming for 'plump'. I'd be happy with that.

-- Sociah T Azzahole (stevem7...), September 21st, 2005. (later)

You wanna bet. Most my female friends prefer their men to be more on the husky side than I. And some have mocked me in the past for my slightness of build.

Although, to be fair, they are fairly envious of the fact that I'm a bit of a tall, thin clothes-horse who looks ok in anything he decides to wear...

It's beans, innit?

Tom OTM re: pleasure vs. risk

But it does seem to be the case that women are often judged solely by their appearance in a way that men are rarely judged *solely* by their appearance (sure, men *do* get judged by their appearance, but they are always able to compensate in other ways.)

And yes, this is bringing up a whole nother kettle of fish that drops us dangerously close to Calumnism, but it's true enough to be a cliche.

xpost

Also I think if I wasn't in a happy long-term relationship my perceptions of my weight, and of a lot of things actually, would be completely different and a lot more troubled, and I probably wouldn't find serene self-responsibility quite as easy to come by.

(And here I thought smug piety was only a middle class fault!)

;-)

n.b. this is playful teasing

and never getting laid ;)

Don't REMIND me... waaaaahhhhh!!!

I've figured it out, though. It's not cause I'm plump, it's cause I'm bonkers. And that I can do nothing about. Ah well... off to the nunnery with me.

1 short guy
1 excessively hairy guy
1 early onset baldness guy

After that, you can say what you will.

i just wanted to BELLOW in agreement with this too.

unless you suck

But it does seem to be the case that women are often judged solely by their appearance in a way that men are rarely judged *solely* by their appearance (sure, men *do* get judged by their appearance, but they are always able to compensate in other ways.)

1,000 NEW ANSWERS!

Now that's crazy.

Anyway, on that note I'm off to rehearsal.

x-post

-- The Brocade Fire (masonicboo...), September 21st, 2005."

Two things -

1. Slinging about pothead as a slur makes you seem, well, stupid, at least in my case.
2. Saying that men are "always able to compensate in other ways" is ridiculous. First of all, we're talking about appearance, right? If someone looks at a bald man, and thinks "Ugh. Bald.", and then somehow he wins them over, it isn't any different than someone looking at an overweight woman, thinking "Ugh. Fat.", and then being convinced otherwise by further information.

Also, any naturally skinny woman who came of age during the Afterschool special anorexia/bulemia era has my greatest of sympathy, because they received loads of shit as soon as it became socially hip to "intervene" and "show concern". I don't think that any body type can claim most injured status.

Baloney. Fat is fat, and people don't like it.

But is anyone claiming it is? I think the claim is that the former happens waaayy more often than the latter.

Also, I think kate's "pothead" slur was just calling people out for their lack short-term memory retention, i.e. are you paying attention, McFly? In fact, I'm positive..

Fried toast!

This is fabulous. Perhaps we have got side-tracked.

FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING, HUH?

I saw a tv documentary about this and it said kate moss and marilyn monroe have the same proportion. I think it was 0.7. possibly.