We need to get real about expectations

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I couldn't agree more. The average woman in America wears a size 14. In the modeling business, a woman who wears a size 12 is considered a "plus-size" model. Seriously? A thinner-than-average woman is a plus size? For a little perspective, Marilyn Monroe also wore a size 12.

A friend of mine who is a graphic artist explains this as what happened when fashion designers and magazines switched from drawn models to photographed models for displaying their clothing. For many years, the artwork for fashion showed women drawn in a stylized manner, as almost stick figures, to emphasize the clothing and minimize the eye being drawn to the figure displaying the clothing, i.e., a somewhat more aesthetically-pleasing coat hanger, as it were. When photography became more cost-effective, and fashion magazines made the switch to real-life models, they realized that women who were considered very attractive, beautiful even (such as Marilyn Monroe), didn't show off the clothes to as great advantage as the skinny, stylized coat-hanger artwork did, because the viewer's eye was drawn to the beauty of the woman rather than to the lines of the clothing. So they started looking for skinnier and skinnier human models to photograph (anyone remember Twiggy?). Over time, just as the fashion magazines created the desire for the fashions themselves, they also created the image of a skinny woman as the ideal woman.

It's unrealistic to expect any female older than age 13 to be that slender, and it has now created several generations of women who are convinced that they are ugly because they have a little padding here and there. Also keep in mind that the camera adds 10-20 lbs to the "look" of a human body, so even the women who look "good" in photographs are probably close to being dangerously underweight. Dangerously, as in near starvation.

If a man would rather hop in the sack with a bag of bones than a real woman with some curves and padding, well, he simply doesn't know what he's missing.

One last consideration - the female hormone, estrogen, is stored in body fat. The less body fat a woman has, the more like a man she is. Chew on that for awhile.......

A bag of bones? So if a woman is skinny she's not a real woman?
How about respecting all shapes and sizes, huh?

Not if she has to literally starve herself to be skinny. Even very naturally slender women have some padding - I'm talking about the difference between slender/healthy and borderline (or actually) anorexic. Ask a doctor - in a woman, no body fat means she has a serious medical condition.

And by no means am I saying "fat is better." The bottom line is: "HEALTHY is better."

The average american woman stands at 5ft 4 1/2 inches. The average American woman weight is 167lbs.

The average American human (women on the high end, so usually over the average) consumes 1 ton of food per year, of that, 200 pounds of refined sugar, 60 gallons of soda pop (high fructose corn syrup), and over 70% of that is usually some type of processed or refined food, with as much as 30% of it being from fast foods (depending on the study you read). The average american diet consists mostly of starches, sugars, and refined foods (potatos, rice, beans, pasta, white breads, and even whole grain and mulit-grain breads, high starches) with a few veggies, meat, and other things mixed in. But extremely high in starches and fructoce, agents known to evoke the metabolism to STORE fuel (converting it to fat, why? because our bodies burn fat as is, while having to convert sugars, with the exception of glucose).

So, to say that the average American woman is obese would be an accurate statement, just as it is to say that the average American man is obese. But to use obesity as a standard is irrelevant to the topic. Especially considering that America, as a nation is far more obese than Europe and Asia combined.



1) estrogen is STORED in fat, not produced in fat. so heftier women have a bigger store house for hormones that aid in, but do not facilitate, in and of themselves, sexual arousal.

2) Absence of elevated estrogen is not absence of femininity. in fact, testosterone is the primary factor to stronger sex drive in women, including stronger attractions to men, and that is considered primarily a male hormone (even though both sexes produce both hormones). and of course estrogen is made from testosterone, so the more testosterone, the more capacity to produce estrogen,

3) very few people drop to dangerously low levels of body fat. The average in athletes being roughly 20% percent. The average in non-athlete extreme being roughly 25% and the overall average being 28-30% (again women having higher numbers than men, don't ask why, it's just the numbers). More than enough store housing to store estrogen in even the overly fit of us.

So to flippantly claim that less estrogen equals more manly, is just simply "smoke and mirrors" and unfounded on available, reliable science.

Is that sufficiently chewed?

Plenty of women are skinny without trying. That's largely why so many others are starving themselves.

The truth is, all we need to do is quit letting the big business dictate how we eat.

You wouldn't call a morbidly obese woman "a bag of fat", and dare write a sentence like "If a man would rather hop in the sack with a bag of fat..." on a public forum, would you?
Why do you think it is acceptable to call an anorexic woman "a bag of bones"?
Why do You think one extreme deserves that kind of attack but not the other one?
You don't have to answer but you should think about why you think the way you do.

I agree with what you say about bad diet. I am a healthy eater and often wander round a store thinking, "I would never buy most of the things on these shelves. If everyone ate like me this store would be smaller."

However, I selected this quote because it doesn't matter how many people become dangerously thin, 1 person is too many. We all of us, male, female, everyone, need to develop a balanced attitude toward weight and focus more on health. No matter what our size is, are we healthy? It's awful that we have a beauty industry that makes people think they should be unhealthily thin to be acceptable. I'm not talking an hour glass, slender woman, I'm talking about women who starve themselves to death because they think they're too fat when they aren't.

A thing from the video that no one is picking up on is the airbrushing of skin. Sometimes I look at these images and laugh because they look so plastic. No one has flawless skin. Male of female.

I began with the idea of asking the question, "what is realistic?"

Is it realistic to wish for a man with fantastic abs? is it realistic to look for a women with flawless skin? Maybe one or two will find that so called perfection, but don't miss out on a good relationship because of external factors. It's who we are inside that counts.

Most men don't find the anorexic type of models attractive btw.

And I agree with yuzu on that double standard. I knew a petite colleague who was naturally very skinny (bony), she was not anorexic nor she was starving herself; because she was always on a special diet for gaining weight.

And what about the six packs guys that a lot of you women drool over? Do you realise that some of those guys drop their abs' body fat to unhealthy levels? There are products for that.

But oh... Men can never be media\trend's victims.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 11 Dec 2013, 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I didn't mean ruben, I meant the likes of Boticelli's Venus who is slender, but still a little wobbly, she doesn't look like modern airbrushing with the removing of all fat like with that Ralph Lauren check shirt ad. Compare Venus' arms to the airbrushed advert. Venus has real woman arms.
Ralph Lauren Bad Photoshop

Even the godesses and heiroglyphic women didn't look as skinny as this photoshopped image. No one does.

I think she is getting just as defensive is Boo, to be honest.

Hello! I said I agreed with you earlier. The covers of Men's health magazines are certainly a culprit from what I've noticed in the shops. They always seem to have some toned torso on the cover. I understand that men are under pressure by society too.

I'm just giving as good as I get. I'm actually slender, I'm just arguing for the sake of it if I'm honest. Which is bad I know, but it's the mood I'm in. I'm in lawyer mood. Someone's got to give him a run for his money.

Eh fine, the post wasn't addressed to you in particular.

This is what I'm saying:

As an adult, I have added weight. I have also been rejected by potential employers for work because of my weight. I eat less than 1300 calories a day but have continued to struggle with weight. When Bonnie died I quit eating for a while and now only eat to abate the weakness and brain fog so I am losing weight again. But my weight has to do with my medical conditions. Still, I am judged by society.

Last edited by FlanMaster on 11 Dec 2013, 4:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.