Did you know that China has a fashion week much like NYC's seasonal tradition in Bryant Park? Did you also know that from the look of this photo taken from yesterday's L.A. Times, China also suffers from the same unbalanced sense of what is healthy in terms of body size and weight that we do here?
What is wrong with us when to look like a famine survivor is considered more attractive than to have plumpness or curves? How much must you starve your body to look like this? I’m sure the model in this photo is a lovely woman, but to have to hold your body to this sort of “standard” is shameful. We live in a world where women in developed nations can have any food they could wish for – yet we are expected to diet and withhold and deprive ourselves in order to fit an unrealistic ideal of what is beautiful. This is not about eating in a healthy and nurturing manner. Cultivating and promoting this sort of thin, bony appearance is unfair and mean. Do we still not get that? How many women must make themselves miserable before we are able to just let it go and embrace our bodies, curves and all?
What is wrong with us when to look like a famine survivor is considered more attractive than to have plumpness or curves? How much must you starve your body to look like this? I’m sure the model in this photo is a lovely woman, but to have to hold your body to this sort of “standard” is shameful. We live in a world where women in developed nations can have any food they could wish for – yet we are expected to diet and withhold and deprive ourselves in order to fit an unrealistic ideal of what is beautiful. This is not about eating in a healthy and nurturing manner. Cultivating and promoting this sort of thin, bony appearance is unfair and mean. Do we still not get that? How many women must make themselves miserable before we are able to just let it go and embrace our bodies, curves and all?
Time marches on, and women still haven't defined their own "perfect." Maybe that's the problem. We can't let go of the idea of perfection, ours or anyone else's.
ReplyDeleteCheryl