Posts with tag weight

It sounds like we might see a forty-something, realistically shaped, African American woman on the cover of Vogue. Pinch us, we must be dreaming.

Kate Winslet is one of our most favorite actresses in the world. (Kate, next time you're in San Francisco, lunch is on us. Seriously -- we'll take you for a lobster club at Neiman Marcus that will change your life!) So we're firmly on her side in the "Vanity Fair Photoshop or not" debate.

The lovely Beyoncé has long been a role model for curvy girls, proudly showing off her bootyliciousness in sexy dresses and revealing costumes.

Here's a quick answer to that question. If you're on the cover of US Weekly, with the headline "TOO THIN FOR TV" across your chest? Then you absolutely are too thin.

This month's Teen Vogue features an article on orthorexia, which experts say is an obsession with eating only "good" foods.

Orthorexics may stick to a stringent raw-foods diet, become obsessed with their sodium intake, or even subsist on homemade, organic baby food. (In other words, orthorexics are consumed by their food, rather than the other way around.)

One girl quoted in Teen Vogue even says, ""I can't help but look down on my friends when they give in to temptations like pizza or ice cream."

Clearly celebrities spend inordinate amounts of time and money keeping themselves as thin and beautiful as possible. But while some actress (like Jennifer Aniston, for instance) are dropping thousands of dollars a month on beauty treatments, others are working hard...to get fat.

There was an uproar in the fashion world in fall 2006 when Madrid and Milan fashion weeks turned away models without a healthy BMI. Since then, a debate has erupted over why America hasn't taken a cue from its European counterparts and imposed a minimum weight restriction on models appearing in fashion shows. Recently, a new voice has joined the party and he has some personal insight into the problem.

Former Halston designer Bradley Bayou had witnessed the industry's sample sizes shrinking, and he went along with it. His oldest daughter constantly tried to lose enough weight so that she could fit into his designs and look as pretty as the models he dressed.

Bayou was unaware that his daughter suffered from an eating disorder (and that he'd been contributing to it) until she entered therapy after a breakdown that had landed her in the emergency room. It was then that he realized the impact that the skeletal fashion models have on women across the world. This was three years ago, and Bayou isn't about to stop spreading his message: Fashion Can Kill.

For a long time now there has been a problem in the fashion industry with clothes that are too tiny, being worn by models that are too thin, walking down runways that are probably too small. This, in turn, has affected the average celebrity who now also feels the need to wear a size zero in order to fit into designer sample clothing. And that has now changed the way we regular women feel about ourselves as well. The pressure from society and the media to be smaller and smaller is more intense than ever!

But, one thing has remained constant in during the thin is in era. Normal men have professed their love for normal size women. Polls are always coming out claiming that men prefer real women with curves, or that guys like a girl with a little meat on her bones.

Not so, says Amanda Fortini, in this month's Elle Magazine. At 5'6" she actually got down to about 100 pounds, and says that men were actually much more into her at that weight. I was actually shocked to hear what she had to say about her experience as a super thin waif of a woman. Amanda wrote, "Many men, I quickly learned, really do like frighteningly lean women, whatever they may claim to the controversy. As an average, medium-size young woman, I was unremarkable, innocuous. As a skinny slip of a thing, I was something of a sensation. In restaurants and at parties, men flirted at me extravagantly...As a male friend once put it to me, semifacetiously, 'A little anorexia is hot.'"

Turns out that Amanda actually had a tropical parasite in her intestines, digesting her food for her. Hmm, are parasites the new binge and purge?

Anyways, men, I'd love to hear what you think. Is it true that someone who looks a little anorexic is hot? Be honest!

Via Big Fat Deal.

Ladies: would you rather have Jennifer Aniston's body, or a million bucks?

If the results from a new poll by Women's Day magazine and AOL Body are any indication, three out of four women would prefer to be wealthy...instead of healthy. This was in spite of the fact that 30 percent admitted feeling "uncomfortable or ashamed" about their bodies, and 37 percent said they wished they could "be thinner."



So...it'd be great to look like a celeb, but it'd be better to be loaded? I guess that makes sense -- when you're rich, everyone is basically required to say you look great, even if it isn't true. And with that kind of money you could buy an endless supply of fancy-shmancy body-shaping undergarments that might fool the casual onlooker into thinking you had a beach bod -- but wouldn't it feel better knowing you had the physique of a movie star?

I guess not. Regardless, you can read the entire poll for yourself in the February 12 issue of Women's Day, which is available in newsstands starting January 22.

This chair looks like something you'd see in those too-cool-for-school clubs that cater to people who wish their lives were more like liquor commercials. Just looking at makes me want to give some girl a flirty look, whisper something sexy in her ear, then casually remove the glass of Captain Morgan from her hand and drink it with a wry grin.

Clubs like this are stupid, and, chances are, you'd look stupid if you put this chair in your house.

But it does have a very interesting feature that might just make it worthwhile. The chair actually changes colors as it interacts with people -- becoming a darker shade of red depending on the weight of whoever is sitting on it.

I love that the mood of a party could be constantly shifting based on who's sitting or standing. However, the obvious drawback is that most people would be too nervous to use the chair, for fear that it'd turn dark red and draw attention to their weight -- so make sure you have confident friends before buying a few for your funky modern pad.

Yes, the weight of the average American is steadily rising and vanity sizing is everywhere, but are the mannequins getting bigger too? The Chicago Tribune an interesting piece on mannequins, those slim beauties gracing store windows. The average mannequin is six inches taller and six sizes smaller than the average American woman and as we get bigger the mannequins set a less realistic example of what the clothes will look like on your body. Mannequins often reflect fashion trends, current mannequins have larger bottoms and are more curvaceous, some even resembling women with breast implants.

In the article, body image expert and professor of psychology at Missouri State University in Springfield, Brooke L. Whisenhunt, says that "anytime you see clothing on the mannequin or model there's pressure to look like them and fit into the clothes." The recent deaths of anorexic models have made some think of reevaluating the slim ideal of the mannequin. Mannequins in a size 8 instead of the traditional 4 to 6 are becoming the norm and the demand for plus-sized mannequins is on the rise. What do you think Styledashers, would you rather have a mannequin that reflects your size or one that reflect the designers' idea.

Female models aren't the only ones feeling the pressure to be skinny. The Independent reports that male models are also required to be dangerously slim. Gone are the rather buff models that used to dominate the catwalk for men's fashion. The look now is rail-thin and that leaves male models facing the same starvation regimes that many female models have adopted.

One model, Ron Saxen has written a book called "The Good Eater" about his battle with an eating disorder. He describes the classic model diet of too much coffee, too much exercise and too little to eat. The article gives the stats for some of the models Chris Ulyatt, shown in Dior in the pic at right, is 6 foot 2 and has a 29-inch waist.

Related posts:
Manorexia is on the rise

Air-brushing scandals aside, I really do love Kate Winslet. In addition to being a great actress and bright human being, Kate Winslet also has a fantastic real girl body.

As a mother, Kate has also expressed her concerned about the influence of fashion magazines and super-skinny celebs on her young daughter. To foster an atmosphere of self-acceptance, Winslet has placed a moratorium on fashion magazines that feature photographs of ultra-thin people. (Presumably, that means no magazines at the Winslet household.)

I have to salute Kate for this one. Even though I write about fashion for a living, I actually stopped reading glossy magazines a year ago. Since then I really have felt better about my very real life. Somehow magazines always had a way of making me feel like I was missing something when in reality, I wasn't. Hopefully, the magazine ban will have a similar effect on the Winslet household.