How tragic is it when we portray attractive, reasonably sized women as overweight in order to sell an image, then exploit the young women who buy into that image to the point of seriously compromising their personal health? And how many women do we have to watch waste away trying to reach that unreachable goal before we realize that our demands are extreme?

yep it makes me laugh when I see a business over here in the UK that specialises in clothes for bigger women UK size 14 to never ending size and the models they use are all UK 10 - so false, I wonder if they could be had for that?

I consider someone a size 6 to be VERY small, but I come from a long line of larger women...we don't have too many size 6's in my farm family...lol .

I don't understand what it is in people's minds that being that thin is even attractive. Even on men, I don't find rail-thinness to be attractive in the least. But I find obesity to be more acceptable than "skeletalism" I guess. Is that weird?

I don't understand what it is in people's minds that being that thin is even attractive. Even on men, I don't find rail-thinness to be attractive in the least. But I find obesity to be more acceptable than "skeletalism" I guess. Is that weird?

I'm not crazy about either, honestly, but both carry similar health risks.

How about the new diet commercial (i forget what it's for, exactly) that shows a (formerly) size 10 woman (a 'medium') celebrating because she now wears a size FOUR? (an 'extra-small'.)

No shit. I've seen those before. They're insane!

I just couldn't get over the placement of those two magazines, personally. On one cover, we're condemning the celebs because of the results of their fixation with weight, on the other cover, we're displaying the very fixation we're condemning. Quite surreal, really.

A third magazine should have carried the latest fines against 4 of the "diet" companies for false and deceptive advertising.

What?  No magazine trumpeting the dangers of trans fats and other obesity causing factors next to the first two?!?

The whole issue (on all sides) is so badly exploited by the media and does so much harm in both directions that it just disgusts me.  Dealing with a teenage daughter now, who happens to be entering the era when peer pressure really starts having a bad effect, I'm seeing what that pressure can do to a young person.  While I don't think my daughter isn't eating enough, I have to worry over her apparent lack of appetite and constantly remind her to make sure she's eating healthy.  Of course reminding her constantly isn't good as she then just turns off the reminders or snaps at them sarcastically (or worse) to try to get you to just leave her alone.

On the other hand, my wife and I are both of weight, my wife much more so than I, and both aren't the best examples of eating right.  So, it makes it ever harder to get my daughter to see our efforts to make sure she's eating enough work in the right direction.