Check out this article from the New York Post and then come back, ok? I’ll wait right here! http://www.nypost.com/seven/08262009/entertainment/fashion/ab_fab__186567.htm
So what do you think? Should models be as close to perfect as possible, with no visible paunches or tiny tires on their middles? Or is it time that we took a more realistic approach?
Sadly, I believe that people would rather look at ideals than reals. Magazines have trained us to feel bad about ourselves and to compare ourselves unfavourably to those within their pages. We aren’t skinny enough, we haven’t accomplished enough and we aren’t having enough sex!
Take a good look around. We’re fat. The same people who poke fun at Jessica Simpson for briefly having a bit of overhang on her size 4 jeans are the ones whose own posteriors are the size of the map your high school geography teacher pulled down over the blackboard. At the Teeswater fair on the weekend I saw more crack than a Harlem drug dealer. And that was just the women! They all can’t possibly have a thyroid problem.
While I applaud Glamour for showing a real women, who happens to be a really beautiful woman with a little bit of a tummy, I don’t think society at large (pun intended) is on board. Just a few years ago we made a huge deal about the Dove ads that showed females of all sizes in their birthday suits. Women recognized it for what it was – a step forward in celebrating what a real woman looks like. Evolved men said the same thing. Others who have become conditioned to get hot and bothered over any woman in a magazine were turned off by the rolls of fat and other imperfections of human life. The campaign continued but no other advertisers followed suit. It was a one-off as I suspect this photo will be, too. In most people’s minds, models are idealized versions of the rest of us. If we want to see reality, we can look in a mirror. Besides, if magazines start using real women instead of stick figures in their fashion layouts, where else are we going to get our addictive fix of, “You’re not good enough!”?