Skinny Obsession

For the last few weeks there is a huge debate in media regarding Kate Upton’s healthy figure. It has been started by really vulgar and angry comments of mysterious person hiding behind the Skinny Gossip blog. She basically compared Kate Upton to cow, pig and porn star. She said that her body has no definition and lacks waist and that she should not be working as a fashion model as her look is not aspirational enough.

As much as I have to agree with the effect Kate Upton’s look might have on the sales of the products she’s advertising, I don’t think her look is vulgar and fat. Her body is more rounded than other models and I must admit that her size is between the size of catwalk models and plus size models but it is nothing wrong. We are so obsessed in today’s society with being skinny that we can’t appreciate beautiful women just because they’re size 10 or more.

Actually beauty is not about size but about proportions. Evolution teaches us that what men perceive as attractive and beautiful is purely based on proportions that indicate fertility. The most important feature is the waist to hip ratio. It’s calculated by dividing the waist measurement by the hip measurement. Women with waist to hip ratio of around 0.7 are considered the most attractive by men. So as you can see it doesn’t matter if you’re a size 10 or 16 but if you have a waist considerably smaller than hips.

I’ve read recently that men like women with some amount of fat stored in their hips and thighs as in this fat women store omega-3 fat called DHA which is responsible for development of brain in the fetus. So women with rounder hips have much higher probability of giving birth to brainier children, which is definitely a trait that men will be subconsciously looking for.

Evolution aside, let’s consider female specific health implications of being skinny rather than slim. The size that models are asked to achieve is actually fairly unnatural beyond the age of 23. When women are teenagers and in their very early twenties, their bodies are naturally skinny as they’re not yet fully developed as women. Even though they already menstruate, their bodies are not yet prepared for the role of becoming a mother. Female body needs to store enough fat tissue to be able to bear the 9 months of pregnancy and the breast-feeding period. If an average woman is trying to achieve the model body, she’s reducing her chance of becoming a healthy mother one day. So many women have problem with getting pregnant nowadays and the obsession with skinny bodies might be just one of the factors playing a role in here next to stress and long working hours.

Behind every obsession is a driving force. The skinny obsession’s driving force is media. They are the channel promoting skinny bodies as beautiful. What’s worse is that they use technology to create unreal images of real women. How much we’ve heard about photoshopping the model images for magazines to fix their curves and small but real imperfections? What’s even more worrying is that women all over the world use these altered images as inspiration and a model of beauty. There is a term ‘thinspiration’ which some define as using imaginary of thin, beautiful women as inspiration to becoming thinner youself. When you think however that these images are unreal, the whole thing seems to be a one big lie.

Israel government actually introduced an ‘anti-skinny-model’ law in March, 2012. They banned the use of underweight models (below BMI 18.5) in magazines and advertisement. Publications are also required to disclose any alteration of images to make models look thinner. Additionally every model is required to bring to each photo shoot a recent medical report stating that she’s not malnutritioned according to WHO standards.

Vogue in May this year introduced new policy regarding hiring models. No model younger than 16 or with obvious signs of eating disorder will be knowingly hired by Vogue. They also extended this request to all the model agencies, producers, photographers and other stuff working on production of marketing imagery and catwalk shows. They have also asked designers to produce slightly bigger samples so that models won’t feel pressured to be unrealistically skinny.

How much of these policies are going to be act on is hard to say at the moment. It will certainly take time to introduce them properly and to actually make them a norm. However, I’m really hoping this is a step forward in the fight between skinny and healthy slim.

One thing that came out of this Kate Upton skinny-fat debate for me personally is that even though I always liked my body, I must say that now I love it! I hope that all of you beautiful ladies love your bodies much more too! Let’s spread Body Love!!!

Filed in: attraction, body image, body love, confidence, evolution, fashion, fat, kate upton, magazine, media, mother, pregnancy, self-esteem, skinny, skinny gossip, slim, vogue

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