[Moogs]

You'd hardly expect this from one of the world's most chauvinist countries (this from a guy who uses the word "chics" on a regular basis), but apparently someone got the memo that scarecrows are not attractive. About fucking time. Get some meat on ya, ladies. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to see ribcage or bare sternum next to artificially enlarged boobs. Or excavated clavicle for that matter. Some of these women look like cartoons.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5341202.stm

[Mugge]

Guess some of those models are going on a "supersize me" binge, in order too keep their place on the catwalk.

[AWR]

And those scrawny butts...

My only question/concern: doesn't the BMI have a number of faults.

I mean, doesn't it sometimes group healthy people (be they skinny or overweight) in with the perfect people (you and me, for example).

It'd be harsh to get chucked out of your job for failing a test that doesn't measure your personal health well.

[BuonRotto]

Yes, the BMI assumes a lot about a person's physical structure that you really can't assume. A man my height could easily weigh 200 pounds and be in great shape since muscle weighs about 8 times more than fat, but BMI doesn't consider percentage of body fat or muscle in its grossly over-simplified calculations. A lot of athletes (ignoring the 'roids issue for a second) appear to be in bad shape according to BMI.

The disadvantage is usually appearing over your BMI number, not usually under, though there might be scenarios for that too.

[psmith2.0]

Next to the bleached hair/orange fake tan thing (yeah I'm looking at you, Hilton), the look I despise most on a woman is that ultra-bony, sick look so many seem to sport. It's not attractive, never has been and never will be.

And yet, who knows how many otherwise healthy and attractive teen and twenty-somethings are hurting themselves to achieve this supposed "standard of beauty".

It's truly sad.

All these idiot shows (the Hollywood entertainment ones, and things like Dateline, 20/20, etc.) will occasionally pay lip service to "the dangers" of striving for that look. Yet they'll turn right around and make a healthy-looking woman seem obese, or will frame the story of a particular actress all around her weight, be it too little or too much.

And then when you watch all these award shows, and these Hollywood starvation victims are showing up in all these funky clothes and getting praised left and right (even though their scapulas, clavicles and sternums are all protruding out 1-3"), what the hell message does THAT send to some 14-year-old who wants to be "noticed by boys" or fit in with "the popular girls"?

All the once-yearly, tinkling piano music stories some of these shows and networks do are completely undone by the complete horseshit they promote and uphold the other 364 days a year.



No wonder some teen girls are completely messed up and feel horrible about themselves. It's an unattainable (by most) and unhealthy appearance...yet it's apparently the end-all/be-all of "beauty" to so many.

[Windswept]

Yeah, I've never understood that whole 'heroin chic' look, with the rail-thin arms and the chest like a washboard of bones. Ugh.

I can't imagine that such a look appeals to any 'guy', for example... so why do these women reduce themselves to such a state?

I mean, models have to be *slim*, because the camera tends to add ten pounds. But there's a big difference between 'slim' and 'emaciated'.

Interesting that this event happened in Spain.

Unhealthily skinny models at last year's fashion shows led to protests from doctors and women's rights groups.

I mean, why was there never such a protest before, in any of the other countries with such ramp shows?

[alcimedes]

Originally Posted by Windswept Yeah, I've never understood that whole 'heroin chic' look, with the rail-thin arms and the chest like a washboard of bones. Ugh. I can't imagine that such a look appeals to any 'guy', for example... so why do these women reduce themselves to such a state? I mean, models have to be *slim*, because the camera tends to add ten pounds. But there's a big difference between 'slim' and 'emaciated'. Interesting that this event happened in Spain. I mean, why was there never such a protest before, in any of the other countries with such ramp shows?

Maybe because deep down guys know that a junkie will do anything to get their fix.

Personal slave.

Ugly bony one, but still.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by alcimedes Maybe because deep down guys know that a junkie will do anything to get their fix. Personal slave. Ugly bony one, but still.

I think I might know a guy who would actually stoop low enough to do that if heroin wasn't so very illegal. Of course if it wasn't illegal, it wouldn't be so expensive and the junkie in question could afford to buy her own.

[Bryson]

If you go by BMI measurements, people who are "Overweight" live longer than those who are "Normal". Which is better now, perfecto boys?



Bryson (Overweight)

[Windswept]

Originally Posted by Bryson Bryson (Overweight)

You *sound* thin.

[autodata]

Originally Posted by Bryson If you go by BMI measurements, people who are "Overweight" live longer than those who are "Normal". Which is better now, perfecto boys?

This interested me enough to do a cursory search, but everything I can find says exactly the opposite: that statistically, higher BMI (>25) is correlated with lower lifespans. Do you have more information?

[BuonRotto]

Depends on how overweight. Seriously overweight people (obese people) die a lot sooner. A few pounds extra relative to BMI standards for some reason correlated in research to those people living longer. You can speculate on any number of reasons why though including that the the index is just plain off, and that people with certain builds (athletes, for example) live longer or have genetic predisposition to better health factors, their build being an effect of that, etc.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by BuonRotto Depends on how overweight. Seriously overweight people (obese people) die a lot sooner. A few pounds extra relative to BMI standards for some reason correlated in research to those people living longer. You can speculate on any number of reasons why though including that the the index is just plain off, and that people with certain builds (athletes, for example) live longer or have genetic predisposition to better health factors, their build being an effect of that, etc.

Yeah, BMI doesn't take into account how much of your mass is muscle and bone vs fat. I'll be the first to admit that I've got a weight problem, but if I weighed as much as my BMI says I should, I'd have something like 0.1% body fat or something, which isn't healthy either.

[autodata]

But most of the info I see attributes that either to BMI not properly accounting for people with higher muscle mass or, as found in wikipedia's "Obesity" article:

Some studies suggest that the somewhat "overweight" tend to live longer than those at their "ideal" weight. This may in part be attributable to lower mortality rates in diseases where death is either caused or contributed to by significant weight loss due to the greater risk of being underweight experienced by those in the ideal category. [note: that sentence wasn't very clear, but I think I got it] Another factor which may confound mortality data is smoking, since obese individuals are less likely to smoke

Granted, the next sentence in the paragraph is:

Osteoporosis is known to occur less in slightly overweight people.

but the National Osteoporosis Foundation says this on its website:

Q: I am overweight for my height. Does this mean I am less likely to get osteoporosis? A: While being ‘a bit’ overweight might offer some protection against osteoporosis, the serious chronic medical conditions that are closely related to carrying extra pounds outweigh any benefits to bone. After menopause, women produce estrogen in fat tissues, so thin women are likely to produce lower levels of their own natural estrogens than are heavier women, and estrogens are known to prevent osteoporosis and related fractures. In addition, most research studies that evaluate the influence of body weight on bone health focus on the risks of low body weight. Women who weigh less than 127 pounds are at greater risk for developing osteoporosis than are women who weigh more. Women who suffer from eating disorders significant enough to alter their normal menstrual cycles also are at greater risk for developing osteoporosis. In short, weight that falls within the normal range is best for overall health. NOF encourages women to eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly and maintain their body weight within normal limits for their height. Medical problems develop when body weight falls below or climbs above those limits.

Edit:

OK, don't mind me, I've just found this subject interesting for no good reason...

Anyway, just digging around I found a couple studies. For instance, this one regarding Korean men and women and published in NEJM says:

Results In both sexes, the average baseline BMI was 23.2, and the rate of death from any cause had a J-shaped association with the BMI, regardless of cigarette-smoking history. The risk of death from any cause was lowest among patients with a BMI of 23.0 to 24.9. In all groups, the risk of death from respiratory causes was higher among subjects with a lower BMI, and the risk of death from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease or cancer was higher among subjects with a higher BMI. The relative risk of death associated with BMI declined with increasing age.

And another one from NEJM notes the debate and reports its findings:

However, whether moderate elevations in BMI (i.e., overweight) truly increase the risk of death is controversial.2 Several studies reported no increase in the risk of death among overweight subjects even after those who died during the initial years of follow-up were excluded or subjects were stratified according to smoking status.25,26,27,28,29 Recently, Flegal et al. reported that overweight was not associated with an excess risk of death in the nationally representative samples of U.S. adults drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.29 They speculated that possible causes for their finding might be improved medical management of obesity-related chronic disease or differences between the U.S. general population and populations in other studies.29 Others have suggested that inadequate control for the combined effects of smoking and chronic illnesses could be the explanation.30 Smoking is associated with both a lower BMI and an increased risk of death and can therefore distort the relation between BMI and the risk of death. Statistical adjustment for smoking status does not fully address the problem; the adjusted findings represent a potentially complex combination of the associations between BMI and the risk of death among current smokers, former smokers, and those who have never smoked. Restriction of analyses to persons who have never smoked is a powerful tool for addressing this potential bias. Our cohort included more than 186,000 men and women who had never smoked. When we restricted our analyses to these persons, the relation of obesity to the risk of death was substantially strengthened, and significant increases emerged in the risk of death, even among overweight participants.

[intlplby]

personally, i like the really skinny chicks.... but they need to be tall... when a girl is 5'11" or 6'0" it isn't terribly hard to look very skinny, but still be healthy....

this is more of an issue for shorter girls than taller girls.... i've known several very tall girls who were naturally tall skinny "gazelle-like" women and they ate pretty heartily.

[Bryson]

Originally Posted by autodata This interested me enough to do a cursory search, but everything I can find says exactly the opposite: that statistically, higher BMI (>25) is correlated with lower lifespans. Do you have more information?

The difference is between "Overweight" and "Obese". Overweight people live longer. Obese people do not.

My source was a number of articles in new scientist - perhaps you should include that in your search terms.

[BuonRotto]

Well, yeah, I know a handful of women who are perfectly healthy, ate like horses, aren't "boney" but are very, very thin by nature. There really is such a thing as body structure that BMI doesn't take into consideration. And some people just have high metabolisms. My friend Melissa is something like 5'7 and is probably just over 100 pounds, but isn't emaciated, just small in all respects: small muscles, thin bones, etc.

BMI lumps everyone together and ignores a ton of other factors that go into what can properly be considered considered overweight or underweight.

[autodata]

Originally Posted by Bryson The difference is between "Overweight" and "Obese". Overweight people live longer. Obese people do not. My source was a number of articles in new scientist - perhaps you should include that in your search terms.

Read what I posted. Everything I posted specifically discussed "overweight," not "obese."

As for studies reported on by new scientist, I'm guessing you don't mean this one:

Furthermore, the AIM study found that even being overweight at 40, rather than obese, shortens life expectancy by around three years. The results were even more stark for smokers, with overweight adults dying seven years before their non-smoking counterparts, and obese smokers dying 13 to 14 years earlier. ... Shortened life expectancies are just one of the drawbacks faced by the overweight. Increased weight also increases the threat of chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

[Moogs]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 ...the look I despise most on a woman is that ultra-bony, sick look so many seem to sport. .... And yet, who knows how many otherwise healthy and attractive teen and twenty-somethings are hurting themselves to achieve this supposed "standard of beauty". It's truly sad.

Exactly. Aside from being unnatural looking, it's extremely unhealthy. These women are constantly barfing up their lunches and depriving their bodies of nutrients, and when they do eat normally, it's usually something ridiculous like a small salad and glass of water. Newsflash: lettuce has no nutritional value whatsoever. It's all water.

What most of these women need is to be put into a clinic and be forced to eat three squares a day for a month, along with some psych counseling. It's really pathetic. Sort of seems like we've become a country of extremes even in how we look. So many people either obese, close to it, or practically anorexic. One day as a country maybe we'll learn the "everything in moderation" lesson (including depriving yourself of food to stay "thin") is the only answer to our problems. Even the political and religious ones.

[drewprops]

Asinine.
I'm tired of making laws to account for idiots.
Could someone please point me to the next frontier? It's getting too crowded hereabouts~

[Banana]

Drewprops, try Alaska.

But then again, a good majority of its population aren't native; usually a psycho who was born and raised in lower 48 states and decided he'd like "rugged and tough" life. Also, men outnumber women 10 to 1, so there is a saying among single women- "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

YMMV.

[intlplby]

on a related note about weight i think that high fructose corn syrup should not be sold to minors......

[Dave]

Originally Posted by BuonRotto BMI lumps everyone together and ignores a ton of other factors that go into what can properly be considered considered overweight or underweight.

Yep. I hear that the new one doesn't even distinguish between male and female.

[Moogs]

Drew: in a way I agree with the general sentiment, but it's not a law. It's just another rule for their business to run by. Their show and their runway, right? They realize these chics are totally out of control with their binge barfing, and won't be a party to encouraging their behavior, much less glamorizing it. Seems OK to me. I guess my title could've been better but I was surprised because it came from within Spain) generally.

[Dorian Gray]

Why are you surprised this happened in Spain?

Personally, I think this is a pretty pathetic attention-grabbing effort. The entire fashion world is thin, from the designers to the clothes to the models to the lines of coke at the parties. That's the way they want it, and that's the way their customer base wants it. It's bad enough seeing half of Hollywood go for the Victorian hourglass look, so please leave the fashion industry alone.

[drewprops]

Oh.
Well.
It's not a law?
Nevermind.
</roseanne_rosannadanna>

.

[Powerdoc]

I agree wholeheartely with the new spanish attitude toward female models.
This attitude was developped with endocrinologist, and is a good new for these models.
When you are a model, you are fired if you take too much weight. So models are forced to be anorexic. That's not healthy

An another consideration is that the role model of models for the youth. There is more and more anorexic girls and anorexia can lead to death (and it's not very rare unfortunately).

If fashion love thin, it's because it's fashion designers are lazy. You can dress, with whatever you want a very thin model, and it will still be cute.

Viva espana

[intlplby]

it's not laziness....... a skinny model gives a better canvas to focus on the actual silhouette of your design. not every design is meant to hug the bodies curves whether it be a skinny person or a fat person...... many designs focus on drapery and a lot more can be done on a skinny model particularly with clothes cut on the bias and jersey knits.....

if you don't believe me go buy a size 2-6 dress form and a size 12+....... start practicing draping on both ..... you simply cannot achieve the same things on a plus size dress form.

it's like trying to create a formula one aerodynamic design using the frame of a dump truck

[Banana]

Originally Posted by intlplby if you don't believe me go buy a size 2-6 dress form and a size 12+....... start practicing draping on both ..... you simply cannot achieve the same things on a plus size dress form.

Assuming this is true (I have my doubts but will withhold as I have nothing to disprove this), I would say the designer are still lazy; just because they can't drape on a dump truck doesn't mean they can't make a dump truck pretty.

A true designer, IMO, would be able to make anyone, even that he-woman Windswept linked to in other thread, look fabulous.

Oh, yeah and let's stop that silly "piece of art" dress parades. Ain't nobody going to wear it on the street.

[intlplby]

there are basically two types of shows:

Haute Couture and then the pret-a-porter shows....

with regards to the Haute Couture shows it is officially only 10 houses and the goal is not to produce production pieces.... oftentimes one piece can be 400-700 man-hours of work to produce.... the goal is rather to produce something that is good design and that most likely will trickle down to the pret-a-porter lines and then down to better brands, then moderate market and eventually some details will make it down to the mass market.....

just because the whole thing isn't going to be worn on the street doesn't mean that many of the details don't make it down to the street in watered down form.

even Paco Rabanne's first collection in 1966 was entitled "12 Experimental Dresses" and they were definitely not meant to be worn... however many of those ideas have made it down to the street level since... the design ideas also don't always have to be restricted to dresses... ideas from a dress may be adapted and used in a purse or in shoes for example.


pret-a-porter shows on the other hand are different... the two goals here are for the media (fashion magazines) and for the buyers.... the shows are becoming increasingly less important for the latter since companies like Zara have forced the buying season to occur in private shows before the runway shows.... the cycle from design to hanger has been reduced in some cases to as short as 14-20 days, so things are being copied before the original designer the buyers can stock them.

i agree that a true designer would be able to make anyone look fabulous..... however, when women become larger, body shapes can be wildly different and then it requires more customization per person..... all of the couture houses design things for larger women privately.... many of them will have custom dress-forms for specific clients. many of which are larger older rich women.

finally, probably the most important part is marketing...... $$$

forget the designer and think about money now.... fashion sells and image..... try making a new fashion brand that has plus size women on the catwalk and tell me how well your runway show gets recieved by the fashion media....

you'll lose money hand over fist.... it's not exactly a formula for a profitable business.....

yes, there is money to be made selling plus size clothes (Lane Bryant for example) but it's not exactly an image that people try to sell or that girls/women want to ascribe to...... Lane Bryant fills a NEED not a DESIRE.....