How thin is acceptable?

[anythingmuppet]

EXACTLY MY POINT! I mean, seriously, HOW skinny does one have to be in order to be accepted in the world today?

Oh trust me, Fluffy, I know how ya's feel....but I've had it the other way around. I've always been so skinny, people tell me constantly to "get some meat on my bones". Well, I've tried, and I suppose my metabolism's too high or something, cuz I never seem to get any ...well...bulkier. But yeah, I definitely see where you're coming from, and I think Krazed hit it on the head pretty well. No one ever likes what they have, it's always something else.

 

[Drtooth]

Yeah. I feel hideously uncomfortable about myself. So much that the weight thing isn't so much an issue with me.

Very true! That and corn syrup is evil! Why the heck is it in everything? (thank goodness for my corn allergy)

Techinically not only corn syrup, but quite a bit of stuff that comes out of corn, right to it being fed to the animals we eat. It goes deeper than you think. That said, Coaco puffs and Count Chocula taste like dirt now that they have a trace amount of whole grain in them. I know it's important to get that thing in your diet, and kids should have a lot more of it... but leave Count Chocula Alone. He's the coolest cereal mascto since Tony the Tiger and Fred Flinstone.

 

[dwmckim]

...Actually i think the alien in the beanie that was the spokesfigure for Quisp (MAN do i ever miss Quisp!) was the alltime coolest but Count Chocula was right up there (i liked Boo Berry a little better though)...when i was a kid Morgan Freeman's Dracula on Electric Company always reminded me of Count Chocula (and made me hungry for it too!)...course if we're including non-animated characters, you can't get cooler than Swedish Chef

Seriously though, this is a subject that's close to my heard (or hot button if you will) being someone that's gone from having his abs be his best physical attribute in his teens to having ballooned up to 50 pounds overweight due to the double whammy of his metabolism catching up with him and having been hit hard with a number of personal tragedies in the last decade (and already being prone to severe depression on top of that). Being a gay male doesn't help much either since the community (at least in AZ) is horribly looksist and it's near impossible to walk into a gathering of other gay people without feeling they're all looking down at me when i enter the room. (I call being overweight like being "the ultraviolet part" of the rainbow - even though the gay community has adopted the rainbow as its symbol due to the diversity it represents, we all like to pretend that the parts we can't see - or don't WANT to see - are part of a rainbow too...infrared and ultraviolet)

At any rate, i've always been hyper aware of media representations of both weight and beauty in general. For a brief amount of time with so many notable media personalities obviously dealing with severe extremes of skinniness (where you couldn't ignore that they had an eating disorder) there was a short moratorium on the attitude of Skinny is Desirable in the overall media - but it was very shortlived and now it even seems to be embracing the extreme bulemia look sad to say. Yes the maker of diet products and health food are the leaders of this pack but it's always interesting to see how much the rest of the media picks up on this and runs with it or distances itself from it.

Too bad we don't live in the olden days where girth was more desirable since it was a sign of wealth (it signaled you were able to afford to eat well) - interesting that we haven't actually got a little back to that considering Bush's economy!

Songwriting has been one of my skills that i've really gotten away from over the years, but for the longest time, i've had in my head the beginnings of a song that was a response to a major long-running ad campaigns that one of the beer companies (Bud?) has had in the gay community - where a group of way-too-good-looking people are all gathered together having a good time (none of them even approaching average looks and certainly not weight) with the tagline "Be Yourself" - i've been wanting to write a song for a long time called "Be Yourself (As Long as You're Like Me)" as a satirical look at that campaign, which is very emblematic of Madison Ave in general (and very offensive to the gay community - so many people try to target "gay consumers" by placing ads featuring shirtless himbos - regardless of what they're advertising; dental products, apartments, insurance...) To me that just offends me and makes me want to boycott their product more than support it because it says to me that they (a) are doing further damage to a community that has to struggle enough for acceptance from without but often eats itself further within (b) thinks of us as people that are just hormones and no brains, and that that's the best way to appeal to us (c) if they need to get us to buy their product by putting some himbo in their ads rather than emphasize what makes their actual product good, automatically says to me that the product must not be that great since they need the smoke and mirrors.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

I'm 5' 7". It's hard to tell if I'm big or not. But I feel like I've had an old mans gut forever. Some people think I'm skinny for a guy, while other think I'm a big dude.

 

[Drtooth]

Too bad we don't live in the olden days where girth was more desirable since it was a sign of wealth (it signaled you were able to afford to eat well) - interesting that we haven't actually got a little back to that considering Bush's economy!

Actually, we got the reverse effect of that. Remember, in the olden days we didn't have processed foods or mass corparate farms that specialize in making only cheaper products. I look at what they serve at higher end places, and the plates are bigger than the food. And by quite a bit, too. Clealry, poor people want a good food deal, and they go for quanitity, not quality. The obesity epidemic targets mostly poor people, and that's the reason why. So looking into it, being thin is also considered a sign of wealth (odd, considering what's going down in Africa), and fat is considered a poverty related thing.

 

[frogboy4]

Actually, we got the reverse effect of that. Remember, in the olden days we didn't have processed foods or mass corparate farms that specialize in making only cheaper products. I look at what they serve at higher end places, and the plates are bigger than the food. And by quite a bit, too. Clealry, poor people want a good food deal, and they go for quanitity, not quality. The obesity epidemic targets mostly poor people, and that's the reason why. So looking into it, being thin is also considered a sign of wealth (odd, considering what's going down in Africa), and fat is considered a poverty related thing.

That is an interesting observation! It also was a sign of wealth and refinement at one time to not have a tan. Pale people like me wouldn't get the rude comments. He he. I enjoy having glowy skin. It works for me. I find it odd how so many people want to insert their arbitrary and useless ideas of "keeping up with the Jones'" into my life. I'm quite thing (actually going for a run now) but I do get the body-type judgment thing. People were meant to be all shapes sizes and colors - including transparently pale!

Also, an added note - fast food also preys on people who least can afford health care. That's truly the battle ground in healthier Americans - fast food. You can't nurse-maid everyone, but taxes for unhealthy items and incentives for better alternatives has been done throughout time in this country with cigarettes and alcohol. I'm not a taxy or government sort of guy, but there needs to be some sort of better steering in the food industry.

 

[Drtooth]

Also, an added note - fast food also preys on people who least can afford health care. That's truly the battle ground in healthier Americans - fast food. You can't nurse-maid everyone, but taxes for unhealthy items and incentives for better alternatives has been done throughout time in this country with cigarettes and alcohol. I'm not a taxy or government sort of guy, but there needs to be some sort of better steering in the food industry.

But that's not really a good solution either. Seems like another thing that punnishes poor and unhealthy people for being poor and unhealthy. The only way there's gonna be any change is on the level of the rich. I mean, we can villify the fast food industry a hundred times, but that's not going to villify the other problem- the companies that help to drive up health food prices. No matter how people are trying to solve the health problem, they're all going about it the wrong way.

The reliance on fast food is on 2 levels (not counting people who are addicted to eating, which is something different all together).

on one hand, fast food, frozen dinners, and junk food are usually what most poverty ridden families can afford for one. And the other hand has to do with the fact people work too many hours at a sedintary job/ The lunch hour quickly became the lunch second, and longer hours= less time mom or dad can come home and cook a decient meal. not to mention the fact that, even though they don't move around much, and sit at desks, they come home tired, and spend the rest of the day/night sleeping.

So for real change fast food taxes aren;'t going to do anything in the long run. They aren't going to go to healthcare or anty sort of program to help these people. The real change must come from business themselves. They need to stop working their employees to death, and intigate some sort of fitness regiment one hour a day. The schools need to work on edible food for kids, since lot of these kids have the only major meal at the school cafeteria. And to put more funding into phys ed. And to make it not torturous of course.

 

[Redsonga]

I am 5'2 (full grown) and med. boned. I am normally 125-130, but up to 135 is suppose to be okay and normal for my body. If I am 120-119 I actually get sick . I am also disabled and big chested so yeah Also, I've found that alot of online w/h charts are more on the skinny side, when I go to the doctor they normally are a bit more...I think the 'be skinny' streotype has even effected online health views . As if being a model is normal :\

It amazes and disgusts me that these commercials for wieght loss things show a fairly skinny person, saying they need to lose 30+ pounds! it seems like everyone has to be anarexicaly skinny to be healthy

This is the way I look at it: If I would basicly die if I lost the weight they are talking about I am not fat .
Just because you *can* be a weight does'nt mean it's *good* for you

 

[Katzi428]

When my grandmother was alive,she used to have issues about my aunt,me & my cousin being overweight. It drove the three of us crazy! (my sister was always thin) Every so often my grandmother would dig into us by saying "You know..I think it's a good idea if you lose some weight." I was so tempted to say "You know,I think it's a good idea if you mind your own business." But I was taught to respect my elders,so I kept my mouth shut. The cousin that I mentioned in the beginning of this post did lose a lot of weight.So of course it was practically shoved in my face. Her mom (my aunt) is still overweight but watching herself. As for me,I'm trying to watch it,but it isn't easy.

 

[Redsonga]

Worrying about weight makes me fat so that is why I don't own a scale . I do just fine