I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit tired of people harping on about the so-called 'obesity crisis' amidst all the 'she’s too skinny/she’s too fat' magazine covers when it really doesn’t matter to me. Call me selfish, but as long as I know I’m doing all I can to be healthy I don’t give a crap what is going on with Nicole Ritchie, Kirstie Alley, Oprah or whomever, and I surely don’t care whether the government makes laws to try to get models to eat because they will do whatever is necessary to keep working; the designers remain concerned only with lean body types. Use bigger models? Quelle horreur! The only 'plus-size' models who get a decent run in high fashion are ex-anorexia sufferers. Go figure.
And why should I care about other people’s size, anway? It’s nothing to do with my life. Is it going to pay my rent? Is it going to put food on the table or help me find love? Hardly. So what’s the damn fuss? Well, the media is starting to skew just about any kind of article about fashion and fashion models to be about weight. Commentary on press releases from companies starting to deliver larger size ranges turn in one sentence from being a journalistic business report to a bloggish commentary on growing obesity statistics because they dare to supply larger sized clothes - which is soooo irresponsible of them in the epidemic of fatness! Then there are all the designers and agencies continuing to rationalize the use of super young and thin models as "aspirational", seeing as fashion is a world of fantasy and all. Yep it sure is. When I looked in the dictionary under "what I want most to look like in the world", sure enough there was a photo of a 14 year-old Russian deer-in-the-headlights blonde wearing Dior couture. Oh, my wildest desires brought to life!
If the human body is made up of 90% water, then why do we use levels of body fat content as a descriptor anyway? Water isn’t made of fat - so people should use degrees of say, ocean instead – like a size 2 is a puddle, a size 8 a pond, a size 14 is a lake, and a size 50 is the friggin’ Atlantic if you like. Whatever. I don’t think we need a system of labeling to begin with but at least let’s be accurate. What you do with your body is your business as long as I can fit enough of my ass on the bus seat next to you to be comfortable.
But my point is this: In this modern world of extremes what the hell is normal? Normal is increasingly seen as vastly different to the statistically determined average size of the population, so can someone please explain it to me? If my exercise regime enables me to run marathons, my diet nourishes my body and promotes vitality, and my social interactions demonstrate that I possess a high degree of external physical attractiveness, why is it that the size of my dress makes me a publicly vilified ogre?
