Ideal body image

[jack]

Finally, two too many people are on my friendslist compaining about other people's attempts to help weight loss made me think of this. Many people are overweight and need to do something about it, this is unarguable and not what I want to discuss.

But there's also the strange thing that the ideal image seems to be way too thin. It used to be the case that fat was seen as beautiful, because it meant you were rich and had enough to eat, whereas poor people weren't and didn't[1].

Will we experience a resurgence of this? Certainly probably the richest people tend to do office work and not have spare time, which isn't a recipe for staying in shape. On the other hand, I can think of a few reasons for the status quo:

* Maybe success correlates with self-control correlates with body image
* It's an overreaction to people being overweight. So much effort is put into losing weight people forget the goal is a healthy weight, and try to continue to lose weight afterwards.
* It's just self-perpetuating. Standards of beauty get reinforced because everyone tries to live up to them, so it takes a long time for anything else to take hold
* Maybe it's a complete myth. Maybe no-one actually does like looking at skeletally thin people at all, but fashion magazines are just print them anyway because they're really stupid or in a modern art rotting cow way .

[1] Or so I've always heard. I haven't looked for a historical cite to confirm that.

Comments

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Actually, there's a rather large network of pro-anorexia/bulimia/ED-NOS LJ communities; searching for the interest "pro-ana" will give you a list of most of them.

No real point to this comment, other than "there's a good deal more than one" :(

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

For a while I was a member of pro-scurvy, just because of the name. But when I realised I couldn't be sure it was a spoof I got out :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

But most appear to be for people who *are* anorexic, or possibly who to look like they are, as opposed to people who think that's beautiful. Which may be more disturbing, but I meant, I don't see that people are actively fancying that.

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Well, the anorexics certainly think it's beautiful. :p

Shrug. I've certainly been through a phase of finding skeletally thin girls attractive, but I was far from mentally stable at that point - and I don't think I can be the only person who's ever felt like that. :p

(I raise this purely to illustrate that it does sometimes happen.)

Anorexia

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm glad to know people do.

But I don't think being an anorexic necessarily means you find anorexics beautiful -- nor even that you *think* it'll make you more beautiful, though that's what you can't help feeling, and I don't know how common those would be.