# Girls its time for a bit of body confidence!



## Kayteuk (Jun 2, 2008)

Everyone is pretty in their own way! So get out those photos you hate and show of your curves in this thread!!
I want bikini pictures, dress photos, and we are going to CELEBRATE curves! 

I'm getting so sick in the modeling world of girls starving themselves I thought I would start this thread. Get your booty's out girls! Woo Woo!

Also, the best article ever written about womens body image!!






*The shape we're in*



                   [FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Why women are to blame for our obsession with being thin. By Mimi Spencer[/FONT]           

       [FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif] *Sunday    August    6, 2006
The Observer* 

[/FONT]          She's far too thin. Everybody says so. In those shrunken hot pants and skinny red vest she looked positively ravenous, like an urchin from Oliver Twist - albeit one with this season's Prada handbag and hair extensions.But just how skinny is Victoria Beckham? How would it feel if she sat on your lap? Would she be heavier than a kitten? If you hugged her would she break? We do know that she wears jeans with a minuscule 23-inch waist - the size, apparently, of a seven-year-old child (it is also, as it happens, the precise circumference of my head).



VB is not alone, of course, but merely the leading exponent of a New Look which has come to dominate our lives. Other exemplars include Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton, Nicole Richie, Kate Bosworth, Amy Winehouse - women relatively new on the celebrity radar who skitter across the pages of magazines, coat hangers furnished with tennis-ball boobs and expensive shoes, not a shred of fat to share among them. You might not give a tossed salad how much these bony birds weigh. You might even agree with Kate Hudson (who recently won a libel action against the UK National Enquirer magazine for implying she had an eating disorder) that it is none of our business. But it is. It matters because hyper-thin has somehow become today's celebrity standard and, as a result - almost without us noticing - the goalposts have moved for us all.With every image of Nicole Richie's feeble wrists or Posh Spice's concave thighs - which seem to shy away from each other as if they've never been properly introduced - with every shot, an inch or an ounce is shaved off the notional ideal female form which governs our relationship with our bodies and with the world. Images of Lindsay Lohan's chest bones, desperately reaching out to greet strangers, or Keira Knightley's xylophone of vertebrae, countable at 30 paces, have burned themselves into our consciousness so that uber-thin no longer looks odd. It no longer shocks. But it does make you look at your own soft, warm body in a hard new light. It's almost as if, in the course of a generation, we've overturned the age-old feminine ideal - maternal, curvaceous, zaftig.


Looking now at pictures of Linda Evangelista in her supermodel prime, or Elizabeth Hurley in her safety-pin Versace frock, they look - unbelievably - a bit on the heavy side, even though at the time they seemed radiantly slim. To achieve this mental switcheroo, something seismic has happened, enough to make a body mass index of 10 (the BMA recommends something in the region of 22) look nearly normal to our rewired brains. When you rub your eyes, though, and snap yourself out of the reverie, you realise that this isn't glamorous. It's cadaverously, dangerously thin.


I have seen this kind of thin before. It resided in the endocrinology department at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where a member of my own family was treated for anorexia throughout her teens. Little could I have known that, in the intervening two decades, the morbidly hungry body type I saw there would become celebrated, a glory to which women of all ages might aspire.
And they do. We do. If we are truthful, it's not just anorexics who pedestal the thin; we all do, to one extent or another. After all, the mantra of our age is that thin gets you noticed. It gets you a contract as a TV presenter or a model or a singer in a girl band. Thin fast-tracks you with far more alacrity than a degree in history. More than that, as a society, we tend to cast a forgiving eye upon the very thin, while castigating the repugnantly fat.


Here on my desk, I have a copy of TeenNow magazine, a junior version of the best-selling gossip title. 'What Celebrities Really Weigh' is its scream-green cover-line. Victoria Beckham, FYI, weighs 7st 10lb; Lindsay Lohan is 7st 8lb; Hilary Duff weighs in at 7st 7lb, the same as Nadine Coyle from Girls Aloud ('My legs are always going to be skinny,' she says. 'There's nothing I can do about that.' Oh yes there is, Nadine! Try chocolate fudge cake. Works for me every time.)


Mischa Barton, meanwhile, is 7st 5lb. Even Katie Price, with her heavyweight frontage, only tips the scales at eight stone. Nicole Richie, though, is the runt in the bunch, weighing a painful 6st 9lb. 'I know I'm too thin,' she is quoted as saying. 'I wouldn't want any young girl looking at me wanting to be like me. I'm not happy with the way I look right now.'


Why then are TeenNow readers getting a Technicolor gawp at her? She's not there, surely, as a warning, but as a temptation. Editor Jeremy Mark seems affronted by the suggestion. 'When we do weight covers, we are scrupulously careful not to suggest that skinniness should be an aim for our readers; we always offer professional advice about healthy eating. It's a touchy subject, particularly among teens, so everything is checked by lawyers and doctors. We certainly have a responsibility to show balance in the images that we choose - which is why we also show Charlotte Church, Joss Stone, Kelly Clarkson, Scarlett Johansson, Beyoncé or Colleen - women with a more rounded shape as a reassurance to our readers.'


Come on, Jeremy, I say. You know thin sells. That's why heat magazine ran 'She's sooo Skinny!' cover lines for a dozen consecutive weeks and smashed their sales figures in the process. Mark eventually concedes that, 'Yes, it's a common belief that you must be thin to be beautiful; there's so much pressure on celebrities to look that way. It's all about ad deals, sponsorship, winning contracts. Pepsi aren't going to book you if you're a size 16, are they? They'll book Cheryl Tweedy instead.'


At the Rhodes Farm Clinic for Eating Disorders in north London, Dr Dee Dawson has noticed a startling jump in the numbers of very young children suffering from anorexia and bulimia. 'We see lots of 10-year-olds,' she says with a sigh. 'The link with celebrity cannot be overstated; though anorexics talk of family problems, the pressure of school or not wanting to grow up, we're now seeing girls who openly say they want to look like Victoria Beckham. Thinness is valued. Among my patients, she is one of the top icons: as far as they can see, she gets invited everywhere, she's got plenty of money, a handsome husband. It's not surprising that they associate her body shape with glamour and success.'


ChildLine too reports an increased number of calls from children, some as young as 10, seeking help with eating disorders. The figure rose from 1,000 in 2001 to 1,500 last year. In a culture which venerates thin, ChildLine reports that it's not unusual for children as young as seven to believe they are fat. Here's a chat-room post from Rachael, age 12: 'I have always hated the way I look. I try to look in the mirror as little as possible. I am curvy in all the wrong places, and if I see someone really slim and pretty it makes me want to cry. But seeing all of the celebs in tight skinny outfits does make me want to lose weight! I've done it before and I'm going to do it again!'


In the darker recesses of the internet, where teenagers increasingly reside, Victoria Beckham has become a macabre pin-up among subscribers to the web's many pro-ana websites. Here, anorexics exchange tips on how to starve themselves effectively ('Smoking burns calories,' offers one contributor; 'If your stomach grumbles, hit it,' suggests another), together with 'thinspirational' images of their favourite celebrities. 'I envy her thin legs and chest,' writes one Posh fan. 'She has beautiful bones sticking out of her chest.'
Beautiful bones? Hardly, says Dr Dee Dawson. 'With a body like that, she'll be osteoporotic very early, she's unlikely to be menstruating, her muscles are being eaten from within - even her heart will have wasted away.' Furthermore, what these girls are admiring is something that doesn't exist in nature - a random handful of body parts held together with eyelash glue. Says Dawson, with unapologetic ire, 'You can count every single one of her ribs, and then you come to those domes of bosoms that there's no way she could produce herself. If she had the right breasts to go with that frame, she'd have nipples and nothing else!'


Yet that weightless, curiously proportioned body is idolised - by all of us, whether we should know better or not. Look at Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, Keira Knightley, Christina Ricci, Teri Hatcher, Eva Herzigova, any model on any catwalk anywhere in the world - I've got handbags that weigh more than they do. I could fold Eva Longoria up and pop her in my pocket. In this looking-glass world, a 100-pounder is a heavyweight. Size 00 - a logical impossibility when you pause to consider it - is now Hollywood's dress-size of choice. True perspective can be gained when you consider that the pin-up of the 1890s was Lillian Russell, all 200 pounds of her. We don't even have to mention Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren - none of whom would get the job today - to know that something's up.


Studies have shown that, while 25 years ago the average model weighed eight per cent less than the average American woman (and, yes, Twiggy was abnormally petite in her day), today's model weighs 23 per cent below the national average. This points up the fascinating paradox that, while we are desperate to keep up with our ever-shrinking celebrities, the average woman is actually getting bulkier. We're round like melons and fat like sausages, despite obsessing about our lardy arses every day. Fat lot of good it does us. While our icons are running the distinct risk of slipping between the cracks in the pavement, we're turning into bollards. Thirty-eight per cent of British women are now classified as overweight, and one in five is obese. If we resemble anyone, it's not Posh Spice. It's Elton John.


As long ago as 2000, the BMA, in its report 'Eating Disorders, Body Image and the Media', noted that the extreme thinness of celebrities was 'both unachievable and biologically inappropriate', observing that the gap between the media ideal and the reality appeared to be making eating disorders worse. 'At present, certain sections of the media provide images of extremely thin or underweight women in contexts which suggest that these weights are healthy or desirable,' it stated, recommending that normal women in the upper reaches of a healthy weight should be 'more in evidence on television as role models for young women'. Television producers and those in advertising should review their employment of very thin women, and the Independent Television Commission should review its advertising policy, the report recommended. Six years on, the converse has happened.


To maintain their 'biologically inappropriate' body shape, our celebrities - those brave enough to step up to the plate and admit it - are permanently hungry. Elizabeth Hurley has confessed as much. Marcia Cross, who plays Bree in Desperate Housewives, recently admitted that staying thin was 'a living hell', and that she felt she had been banned from eating since joining the show. Actresses, models, singers, presenters - all are subject to the tyranny of thin enforced by the minders, moulders and producers who know very well what sells. We know it happened to All Saints, to Girls Aloud. I know that it happens to hopeful young girls from the moment that first crumby Polaroid is taken in the reception of the modelling agency. Myleene Klass, a winner of the Popstars talent contest, was a size 12/14 until her then record company advised her to watch herself on video to see how fat she was. She was assigned a personal trainer, and told to become a size eight. Fast.


For years now the dreaded 'thin issue' has plagued the fashion press, who stand accused of promoting a singular and unachievable body shape with every androgynous little sparrow to grace their glossy pages. Every now and then, we see a flutter of concern - when Omega pulled its ads from Vogue in a 1997 protest, for instance, or when the industry's prime movers were called to a meeting at Downing Street in 2000 to grapple with the issue. What tends to emerge after the dust has died down is a whole lot of nothing. There are occasional forays into the fat zone - a 1997 Nick Knight shoot in Vogue called 'Modern Curves' featured plus-size model Sara Morrison; in the same year, The Body Shop ran a series of ads with the tag line, 'There are three billion women who don't look like supermodels, and only eight who do'. Set against the vast portfolio of 'thimages' which make up the wallpaper of our lives, these trifling efforts have about as much impact as a bubble on the wind.


As Dr Dee Dawson notes, 'I've sat on endless discussion groups and panels with magazine editors, and they always say they're trying for balance, that they're going to change. It never happens.'


It did happen, once at least in my experience. When I worked at Vogue a decade ago, one of the editors produced a beach-shoot featuring a size-14 model. When they arrived in the office, the photos looked great; the model was statuesque, not overweight. But later, on the published page, tucked in between other shoots and ads featuring the starving Barbaras that are the usual glossy fodder, this lovely woman looked huge, as if she'd been inflated with a bicycle pump. No wonder the experiment wasn't repeated. No wonder Sophie Dahl shrank the moment she made it as a model. Given the choice, we'll take thin, thanks.
Following the Downing Street initiative, Premier, a top model agency, argued convincingly that women who bought fashion magazines were as much to blame as the editors and advertisers who used them. 'It is a supply-and-demand thing - advertisers, magazines and agencies supply the image that consumers want to see. Statistics show that if you stick a beautiful skinny girl on the cover of a magazine you sell more copies.'


Vogue's editor Alexandra Shulman might well agree, though she's too polite to say so. Until lately, she has rather shirked the issue by saying, 'All we are doing is showing images of women we regard as interesting or beautiful or fashionable. But we are not actually saying you have to be like this.' Last year, though, Shulman was more candid: 'I really wish that models were a bit bigger because then I wouldn't have to deal with this the whole time,' she said in one newspaper interview. 'There is pressure on them to stay thin, and I'm always talking to the designers about it, asking why they can't just be a bit closer to a real woman's physique in terms of their ideal, but they're not going to do it. Clothes look better to all of our eyes on people who are thinner.'
Boom. The bottom line. Clothes. Put bluntly, clothes look better on a slim frame. 'Being skinny doesn't mean you've automatically got a good body, not at all,' confides one wafer-thin friend. 'Thin definitely doesn't give you good legs, just thinner legs. But it does, by and large, mean you'll look all right in clothes.'


And don't we all of us want that? In my experience, there's a constant jockeying for position on the weight front among women, a competitive, low-grade bitchery (rarely expressed, but captured, often, on the cover of heat or Now) which reveres the dropping of a dress size and stigmatises the gaining of a kilo. Of course, if you're bright and grown-up and plugged into the issues of the day, you tend not to let on that you're fascinated by other women's bottoms. But you are. We are. We look. We compare. In our image-saturated, overweight universe, we're hypercritical of our peers and our paragons. It's nothing to do with men (heaven knows, few men actually fancy the perilously thin females glorified by women; most would swap five Posh Spices for a Jennifer Lopez any day), and everything to do with competition between females.


'Women are duplicitous on this issue,' says Leeds Medical School psychologist Dr Andrew Hill. 'Much of the pressure about appearance and weight is applied by other women. In the face of nutritional abundance, women are showing their status by eating poorly - much as a corpulent belly historically indicated status in times of privation. It's perverse, but a reverse snobbery now informs our relationship with weight; being thin in an overeating society is a sign of control. It takes enormous will to stay so thin.
'Nationally, we're getting fatter by a percentage point each year - so people who are trying to lose weight, which means most of us, are in awe of the high achievers in the field. We're also intimately involved in celebrity lives in a way we never used to be. We're encouraged to have an opinion by an invasive media.'


The web makes it easier still. Last year, FeedLindsay.com amassed more than 30,000 signatures petitioning scrappy little Lohan to gain weight. Last February, Nicole Richie was weighed 'live' on the prime-time Howard Stern Show, a grotesque freak fair for the modern age. (Since you ask, she was 92 pounds, though observers speculate that she has slimmed down since then; besides, she was wearing jewellery at the time.)


With every diet tip and photo shoot offered by the famous, the more we are invited to take a seat at their table and judge and, says Dr Hill, the more self-critical we become as a society. As a result, he says, 'Weight control has become the ambition of a generation.'
For all but the very disciplined - or very disturbed - the kind of hyper-thin portrayed by the stars is an impossible goal, which is why so many Western women are in a constant state of food anxiety. Four in 10 of us are on a permanent diet. Ninety-eight per cent of us hate our bodies. We nurse our own little rituals, weight-management tics that were once the preserve of the Hurleys and Paltrows of this world, carefully tailored to suit our needs. We know how much bread we ate for lunch and whether we can, therefore, have half a potato for supper. We're living under a siege of our own making, bedevilled by a sickening guilt as we lick the last chocolate smear from a Magnum lolly.


Some, of course, are more passionate in their pursuit of thin than others. My wafer-thin friend is adamant that she is well within the bell-curve of normal when she describes her 'couture-eating disorder' thus: 'It may vary from writing down fat grams and cals consumed in a single day on the backs of envelopes, which is done as thoughtlessly as doodling, to the constant bits of fat-avoiding snippets we exchange, to 'snacking' on coffee because it take the edge off hunger to having a glass of water or Diet Coke very close to hand if you ever decide to have a teeny bit of chocolate, so that you can wash away the taste immediately and stop yourself wanting more ...' And this from an intelligent individual, who knows very well that the game of Thin Quest is the last word in banal. So, why? Why, after emancipation, feminism, after - ha ha - Girl Power - should pouring yourself into a very small frock be such a stellar achievement? Isn't it embarrassingly shallow and meaningless?


We persist, says Dr Hill, because weight has come to signify all that is desirable, because 'judgment of character is increasingly based on superficial appearance. We objectify celebrities, inferring all sorts of things from their physical appearance. Image colours everything, simply because, in a world overloaded with information, we cling to what is most obvious: and that's how things look.'
The recent influx of what Dr Hill calls 'talentless self-seeking bimbettes' into the fame game has only concentrated attention more fully on looks alone; that's all that remains now that silly old talent appears to have been excised from the equation. In Victoria Beckham's case, her 'thimage' has become a life raft for a sinking career. As one of her friends pointed out recently, 'Her figure is her career and with the spotlight constantly on her, she says she has to watch her weight very carefully. She doesn't care if some people think she's gone too far.'


If anything, she has come out fighting: 'I haven't got an eating disorder,' she snapped the other day, 'I'm just disciplined about what I eat.' But my, what discipline! Really, it's hard not to be impressed. Most of us would buckle after 10 minutes on her punishing regime. She chews for ages. She quizzes waiters to have them remove butter, oil and salad dressings from her plate. She doesn't eat portions that can't fit into the palm of her hand, 'as that's the same size as her stomach'. She only eats fruit till 3pm and then limits her intake to 500 calories for the rest of the day.


It's possible - as Dr Dee Dawson points out - that Posh doesn't have an eating disorder in the medical sense; anorexia and bulimia are, after all, psychiatric conditions characterised by a host of pathological behaviours and beliefs way beyond the normal range. While she displays plenty of these, she also has enough control and awareness to calibrate her food intake when she wants a child and then rein her appetite back in when she wants to dump the baby fat. According to the friend, 'Victoria knows that she'll have to start eating carbs if she has any hope of conceiving [a fourth baby].' Could you ask for a more revealing take on modern life?


While Victoria admits she has 'come close' to an eating disorder, other celebrities are more candid. Here's just a handful who have recently disclosed their own anorexia or bulimia (though they usually distance themselves from its grim reality by using the past tense): Mary Kate Olsen, Christina Ricci, Portia de Rossi, Calista Flockhart, Karen Elson, Tracy Shaw, Kate Beckinsale, Geri Halliwell, Melanie Chisholm ... Not that it stops us wanting to look like them; we just choose to concentrate on their lovely slim arms and nutty buttocks rather than the fact that they have possibly just chucked up their lunch. Funny how a brain can curtain off unpalatable truths and feed happily on the garnish.


But perhaps we should look harder - at Victoria's sad little bod, at her desperate little jeans. Perhaps we should train ourselves to see the perma-hunger of the hyper-thin. Strip away the gloss, starve their lovely bones of the oxygen of publicity. In the final analysis, doesn't the responsibility lie not with them, but with us?














You go girls!


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## Kayteuk (Jun 16, 2008)

Bump!


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## cupcake_x (Jun 26, 2008)

Thank you =)


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## pumpkincat210 (Jun 26, 2008)

I am going to have my hubby take some shots of me when he gets home.


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## Shimmer (Jun 26, 2008)

This is what gives me body confidence.


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## pumpkincat210 (Jun 26, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *Shimmer* 

 
_This is what gives me body confidence._

 
That looks like so much fun! i've always wanted to do it, but never got around to it.   For some reason i think after some practice i'd be really good at it since i'm a tomboy at heart.   I love climbing and heights, plus it works every muscle in your body, go you!


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## TDoll (Jun 26, 2008)

I think this is a great message, but there are healthy girls out there who are a size 2 or 4 and are not starving themselves.  And, in fact, have curves that are proportional to their bodies.  I've never had body issues, nor have starved myself and can be a size 2-6 depending on the store.  I have a butt, I have boobs and I consider myself to be thin and have nice curves.
I'm sick of the mentality that you have to be slightly overweight to be considered a "real" woman.  
NO matter what size or shape, all women are beautiful and EVERY woman is a REAL woman.  
Despite what most women like to think, every thin woman is not starving themselves or are feeding an eating disorder to look that way.  Are there some people that are too thin and have these disorders?? YES.  Are there women that are morbidly obese that continue to gorge themselves and not eat healthy and exercise?? YES.  That would be like thin women going around saying these things openly all the time about overweight women...which doesn't happen openly very often. 
There certainly is not an article like this covering the opposite side of the spectrum.  I could imagine how women would react to that...but saying these things about thin women is ok??? It's the same thing, and it's offensive.

Just as many women like to argue, YES...there are so many sizes and shapes of us gals.  Thin gals included.


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## pumpkincat210 (Jun 26, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *TDoll* 

 
_I think this is a great message, but there are healthy girls out there who are a size 2 or 4 and are not starving themselves.  And, in fact, have curves that are proportional to their bodies.  I've never had body issues, nor have starved myself and can be a size 2-6 depending on the store.  I have a butt, I have boobs and I consider myself to be thin and have nice curves.
I'm sick of the mentality that you have to be slightly overweight to be considered a "real" woman.  
NO matter what size or shape, all women are beautiful and EVERY woman is a REAL woman.  
Despite what most women like to think, every thin woman is not starving themselves or are feeding an eating disorder to look that way.  Are there some people that are too thin and have these disorders?? YES.  Are there women that are morbidly obese that continue to gorge themselves and not eat healthy and exercise?? YES.  That would be like thin women going around saying these things openly all the time about overweight women...which doesn't happen openly very often. 
There certainly is not an article like this covering the opposite side of the spectrum.  I could imagine how women would react to that...but saying these things about thin women is ok??? It's the same thing, and it's offensive.

Just as many women like to argue, YES...there are so many sizes and shapes of us gals.  Thin gals included._

 

I'm 5'4" and 115 pounds, size 3 but i've got some curves.  I did lose 25 pounds of unhealthy weight, but it wasn't right on me. I didn't feel healthy and i felt sluggish.  It is a little insulting to say that thin gals aren't real women.   If that were true i wouldn't have 3 kids.  I don't think the OP was being intentionally being offensive though, I think she just wanted to see the norm, the people that visited the site, fat, thin, tall, short, etc.  What is normal?   Genetics play a huge role in what kind of body you have.

To me this thread may actually be a little offensive to those with eating disorders.  Do you think they would post a picture of themselves, or would they feel too "fat" to post?  Do they feel like real women?  

A woman is simply someone with the reproductive system that can produce a child, working or not, hysterectomy or not.  I could go even further and say that it is a state of mind. 

I'm going to post my picture because i'm normal.  I have 3 kids this is what i look like in a bathing suit, lol.


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## Shimmer (Jun 26, 2008)

Ehhh. I say ignore the scales. I'm 5'3" and weigh 143 lbs, and it doesn't mean jack, except that I'm brawny. I'm a size 4-6, depending on where I buy the clothes.  3 kids, 3 c-sections, and the end of my 20s, I really can't complain about that.

So, ignore the scale ladies


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## TDoll (Jun 27, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *pumpkincat210* 

 
_I'm 5'4" and 115 pounds, size 3 but i've got some curves.  I did lose 25 pounds of unhealthy weight, but it wasn't right on me. I didn't feel healthy and i felt sluggish.  It is a little insulting to say that thin gals aren't real women.   If that were true i wouldn't have 3 kids.  I don't think the OP was being intentionally being offensive though, I think she just wanted to see the norm, the people that visited the site, fat, thin, tall, short, etc.  What is normal?   Genetics play a huge role in what kind of body you have.

To me this thread may actually be a little offensive to those with eating disorders.  Do you think they would post a picture of themselves, or would they feel too "fat" to post?  Do they feel like real women?  

A woman is simply someone with the reproductive system that can produce a child, working or not, hysterectomy or not.  I could go even further and say that it is a state of mind. 

I'm going to post my picture because i'm normal.  I have 3 kids this is what i look like in a bathing suit, lol._

 
I totally agree with you.  
I didn't mean that the girl who posted this thread was doing or saying anything offensive, I just feel that in general, women who use the whole "this is what a real woman looks like" mentality aren't being very supportive of those who have had the struggles with an eating disorder or people like myself who are naturally thin. I feel there are a lot of people, no doubt, that do lose weight the unhealthy way and get too thin.  However, there are women that eat too much and get too overweight as well which is just as dangerous.  It's like it's become politically correct to accept the idea that all women should be overweight and women who are thin or muscular are looked down upon....like, "Oh, she must starve herself to look like that."  It's simply not true. It's a double standard and women aren't being supportive of one another anymore.


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## pat (Jun 27, 2008)

For years I've felt that society has always had a mindset of what "beautiful" was, particularly thin.  Until recently, I feel that people in the industry are able to embrace a "fuller" woman on t.v. (America Ferrara, Jennifer Hudson, etc).  It's also nice to see stores like Torrid, Old Navy, and etc branching out and producing fashionable clothing that fit plus size women. (good job!) 

I've always been the "bigger" girl and always felt that I was too fat.  The worst days consisted of people making fun of my weight.  Now that I am 20, I still get the "you're such a pretty girl but if you were slimmer you'd be prettier"... (I get this from adults aka my parents co-workers, grandparents, etc)  It hurts but with that, you see how some people will not look beyond you're weight.    

I am, however, proud to say that I'm down two pant sizes ( I was a pant size 16, now a 14.  That's two pant sizes down right?! hahah). 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




.. I am not doing this for anyone, just for myself.  I want to get healthy for my own benefit. My goal is to go down to a size 10 or 8 and I'll be fine with that.  I'm not starving myself, just eating wiser and lesser portions.  

Ok, enough rambling!!


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## pumpkincat210 (Jun 27, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *patty0411* 

 
_For years I've felt that society has always had a mindset of what "beautiful" was, particularly thin.  Until recently, I feel that people in the industry are able to embrace a "fuller" woman on t.v. (America Ferrara, Jennifer Hudson, etc).  It's also nice to see stores like Torrid, Old Navy, and etc branching out and producing fashionable clothing that fit plus size women. (good job!) 

I've always been the "bigger" girl and always felt that I was too fat.  The worst days consisted of people making fun of my weight.  Now that I am 20, I still get the "you're such a pretty girl but if you were slimmer you'd be prettier"... (I get this from adults aka my parents co-workers, grandparents, etc)  It hurts but with that, you see how some people will not look beyond you're weight.    

I am, however, proud to say that I'm down two pant sizes ( I was a pant size 16, now a 14.  That's two pant sizes down right?! hahah). 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




.. I am not doing this for anyone, just for myself.  I want to get healthy for my own benefit. My goal is to go down to a size 10 or 8 and I'll be fine with that.  I'm not starving myself, just eating wiser and lesser portions.  

Ok, enough rambling!!_

 
It's so rude for people to say you're pretty but if you were smaller you'd be prettier.  Sometimes i think people say it because they don't know how to tell you that you may be putting your health at risk.  It's great that you are taking steps to reach a healthier weight for your body and heart.  Now that i'm in my late 20's i'm starting to think ahead and my family has a history of heart problems and adult onset diabetes, so i felt it was necessary to do something early and lose weight.  Since you are so young it will be even easier to lose weight. I agree with you that portion control and healthy eating are the way to go.  I lost a lot of weight rather quickly doing that.  Good luck and do it for yourself, you'll feel great.


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## stacylynne (Jun 27, 2008)

A confident woman is a beautiful woman.
We all come in different shapes, sizes & colors


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## Kayteuk (Jun 27, 2008)

Thank god this topic started a debate =D


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## TDoll (Jun 27, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *Kayteuk* 

 
_Thank god this topic started a debate =D_

 
What debate? 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 I think all the responders are on the same page.


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## tara_hearts (Jul 11, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *TDoll* 

 
_I think this is a great message, but there are healthy girls out there who are a size 2 or 4 and are not starving themselves. And, in fact, have curves that are proportional to their bodies. I've never had body issues, nor have starved myself and can be a size 2-6 depending on the store. I have a butt, I have boobs and I consider myself to be thin and have nice curves.
I'm sick of the mentality that you have to be slightly overweight to be considered a "real" woman. 
NO matter what size or shape, all women are beautiful and EVERY woman is a REAL woman. 
Despite what most women like to think, every thin woman is not starving themselves or are feeding an eating disorder to look that way. Are there some people that are too thin and have these disorders?? YES. Are there women that are morbidly obese that continue to gorge themselves and not eat healthy and exercise?? YES. That would be like thin women going around saying these things openly all the time about overweight women...which doesn't happen openly very often. 
There certainly is not an article like this covering the opposite side of the spectrum. I could imagine how women would react to that...but saying these things about thin women is ok??? It's the same thing, and it's offensive.

Just as many women like to argue, YES...there are so many sizes and shapes of us gals. Thin gals included._

 
Sooo agree. I had a job at a vet clinic and the scrubs were really huge on me and two older receptionist were like "Ooh those swallow you, me and Robin can wear them, we are the only real sized women around all you skinny minnies."
Blah, yes, I'm a fake sized woman. That sounds really intelligent.


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## florabundance (Jul 11, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *Kayteuk* 

 
_
Here's a chat-room post from Rachael, age 12: 'I have always hated the way I look. I try to look in the mirror as little as possible. I am curvy in all the wrong places, and if I see someone really slim and pretty it makes me want to cry. But seeing all of the celebs in tight skinny outfits does make me want to lose weight! I've done it before and I'm going to do it again!'_

 
That's the saddest thing to read.


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## florabundance (Jul 11, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *TDoll* 

 
_I think this is a great message, but there are healthy girls out there who are a size 2 or 4 and are not starving themselves.  And, in fact, have curves that are proportional to their bodies.  I've never had body issues, nor have starved myself and can be a size 2-6 depending on the store.  I have a butt, I have boobs and I consider myself to be thin and have nice curves.
I'm sick of the mentality that you have to be slightly overweight to be considered a "real" woman.  
NO matter what size or shape, all women are beautiful and EVERY woman is a REAL woman.  
Despite what most women like to think, every thin woman is not starving themselves or are feeding an eating disorder to look that way.  Are there some people that are too thin and have these disorders?? YES.  Are there women that are morbidly obese that continue to gorge themselves and not eat healthy and exercise?? YES.  That would be like thin women going around saying these things openly all the time about overweight women...which doesn't happen openly very often. 
There certainly is not an article like this covering the opposite side of the spectrum.  I could imagine how women would react to that...but saying these things about thin women is ok??? It's the same thing, and it's offensive.

Just as many women like to argue, YES...there are so many sizes and shapes of us gals.  Thin gals included._

 
Yeah i do agree to an extent. However, to quote a good male friend of mine:
"Just because we [men] notice that a girl is too thin, doesn't mean we wouldnt sleep with them"
Me: "oh and if a girl's too heavy?"
Him: "..."

I think that's where a big part of the problem is rooted.


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## jasminbarley (Jul 11, 2008)

*****


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## KellyBean (Jul 11, 2008)

Quote:

   Originally Posted by *jasminbarley* 

 
_





I've always been petite. I dreaded mealtimes in front of other people outside my immediate family. It seems acceptable in office environments and social occasions to make comments about the plate of a 'thin' person and say things like "you don't eat much do you? No wonder you're so skinny." Would it be equally acceptable to say to a 'curvier' person, "You eat too much don't you, no wonder you're so fat?" Somehow, I doubt it. A number of people have also told me that they thought I was a vegetarian?! Presumably, thin person = vegetarian. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




...

IMHO, the 'size zero' issue doesn't really consider petites. I can understand the concern re models in the 5ft6+ range but the campaign leaves me a little cold. It's as if it's telling me that I'm not allowed to be the size that I am. That somehow I'm not normal and I'm not a real woman.

...

*Yes, some real women have curves, but some real women don't have curves!*

To be honest, I just think that women not only obsess too much about their own weight, *but they also obsess too much about other women's weight, when truth be told, it's usually none of their business*. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	


_

 
I agree with all of this. I'm 5' tall (and still growing, I hope!) and up until recently, I've been a size 00 (now I'm a 0 to 1). I've never, ever been on a diet at all. However, some of my friends really obsess over this, saying things like "I need to lose 10 pounds." The truth is, if you're healthy, weight shouldn't matter.

I agree about society forgetting petites, like somehow we don't exist. Yes, it's true; the majority of people get bigger over time. In colonial times, for example, cielings were lower and beds were considerably shorter. However, I'm clearly never going to be tall. If I want to buy pants, especially in "juniors" sections, there's no way in heck they'll fit without being hemmed, and I'm really sick of that. I'm all for "real women aren't models"; that's true, but it's not only about weight, THERE ARE PEOPLE SHORTER THAN MODELS!!! Whenever I pass by the plus-size shop in Macy's or Nordstroms, it's usually about as big as the regular sizes. The petites are stuck with some grandma-ish rack of pastel suits. However, I absolutely love being short and if I had the chance, I'd never trade it for being tall. No way, no how.

By the way, if you're petite, I'd recommend the blog, "petite fashionista." It's written by a petite stylist and she's totally adorable! I've done a few e-mail exchanges and she's so helpful!


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## kimmy (Jul 13, 2008)

this thing goes both ways. i'm 5'7" and have never weighed more than 111lbs. i've also never been on a diet or had an eating disorder. i also don't give a damn who says "real women have curves" because your body shape doesn't have anything to do with your worth as a human...never has, never will.

that's great that people want to empower the curvy ladies, but there's still girls that will never be curvy no matter what, and i think discounting us based solely on our shape doesn't make anything better, if anything it just makes it worse.


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## IDontKnowMomo (Jul 14, 2008)

I hate when people imply that curves are healthy like there aren't naturally tiny people. I'm 5' and 95-100 lb.;-; I always feel silly when I see threads like this.


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## KellyBean (Jul 15, 2008)

I agree with what everyone's been saying. As long as you're healthy and you take care of yourself (in terms of eating right, excercising, drinking 8 cups of water a day) and your doctor is fine with your weight, *size shouldn't matter*.

Of course, the truth is that everyone has flaws. I don't think that the point of this thread was to discriminate against anyone, but to instead make everyone appreciate their best features! Most people, when looking in the mirror, will only focus on bits of fat, bones, cellulite, undereye circles, flab, sagging, etc. However, everyone should at least try to concentrate on their better aspects (good skin, pretty eyes, nice hands, tight abs, perky butt, muscular arms, cute bellybutton, whatever it is) I swear, it's not all negative!


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## darkishstar (Jul 15, 2008)

I don't have curves! And it's always made me unhappy. Funny thing is, I think a lot of women have a selective way of seeing celebrities. I never saw the thin being celebrated, personally. I always saw the women who had breasts and a nice butt be celebrated, and I don't have either! I'm 5'4.75" and 110 pounds and most def a 34A. I'm still sad about it, but somehow we always want what others have, I know a lot of girls with big breasts who want what I have. So in the end, even if we change ourselves to fit whatever standard, we're not going to be happy. So might as well stay as how we are, and learn to love it. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





That being said. I was a victim of anorexia nervosa before. I was pretty much the same height in sophomore year of high school and I finally snapped out of it, when the scale read 85 pounds. I don't blame the media, but my own insecurities and stresses during that period in my life.

However, I think for a lot of cases today, it's because of the media that a lot of younger girls can't accept themselves for how they are.


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