The average American woman is also overweight. I don't think we should appeal to the "average" because the average has only been increasing for many decades. What is popular or common is not necessarily the ideal.
I don't think that a size 14 or so woman is outrageously overweight or unattractive but that doesn't really matter because people only care about what they think is popular. As conservative as it's going to sound, I think the core issue is with things like "family values" and teaching our children to find inner peace. Everybody should have thick enough skin so that they aren't swayed too easily by what others think. I mean, we teach media literacy in English from Grade 7 (probably it's earlier now) to help children understand media by identifying biases, messages, who the message is written by and for whom, etc etc but it's probably useless cuz nobody gives a **** about school anyways so the lessons fall on deaf ears.
I don't know how feasible or whether we even should interfere with the fashion industry. I think as families and communities we have a responsibility to teach our children the lessons they need to understand themselves and the world and not be swayed by slick images. We can put our best foot forwards where we actually have power to effect change.
So it's okay to demonise perfectly healthy women for the sake of the self esteem of the overweight? Then what, you make all models size 14 and all the obese women will still feel bad about themselves. This argument holds no water for me.
1. Both of you made the same incorrect assumption that I mentioned the average size of women to imply that that should be the average size of models. I mentioned the average size of women as a counterpoint to Lotus' "I'm the same size as models and they make me feel better about myself, therefore it's an attitude problem, not an actual problem" - because the majority of women are very emphatically
not the same size as models, and thus have a very different experience when they see them.
2. Lotus, I'm not sure why you assumed that disagreeing with having all models identical sizes that are in a practical sense unachieveable for most women is "demonising perfectly health women for the sake of the self esteem of the overweight". I would like to point out that all I'm talking about is wider representation of body types, and you've turned it into being demonized. How is not having every single straight-size model in existence be within 2 sizes of you imply demonization?
3. Why do we even need an "ideal"? The "where should we set the ideal weight to make women who don't match it feel terrible about themselves" argument is bunk from the start. Instead, we should remove the idea of an ideal. It's very clearly based in societal norms and not based in some base human nature that loves skinny women, considering in the past overweight women were seen as more attractive due to many societal reasons that differed by culture.
This also rests on another bunk argument - that if the media shames overweight women by making sure they know that they are not beautiful, they are not the ideal, and they need to change to match it if they want to be beautiful, those women will change. Studies have shown that women feeling shame about their weight do not work to change it, on the whole - they eat more, they're more depressed (which causes weight gain), they're more sedentary. I know from my own personal experience that I began to lose weight when I began to love my body and want to take care of it. I did it from a place of comfort with myself, not shame. When you hate your body, why would you take the time to make it healthy? The focus on health regardless of weight and the focus on loving your body go hand in hand.
This is a bit of a side note that was brought up with "everyone else just has an attitude problem" and will likely be brought up by that previous point - blaming a sociological trend in opinion on the people is willfully ignoring the point of sociology. There is a reason why a majority of people in a certain culture share the same opinion about something. When there's a crack in the dam and the river is getting through, you don't tell people to start trying to collect the water coming through and throw it out to solve the problem; you find the crack and fill it. There's a reason why when an entire class is failing, people look to the teacher and not the students. We are all influenced by our surroundings, well before we can even talk or fully understand what we're seeing. Sociological studies on opinions that don't make sense in your personal worldview are not there for you to say "well I think that opinion is stupid so I'll just get the 90 million people to be less stupid and solve the problem!" It's there to point out that there is a root cause for all of this, and if we find the root cause and fill the crack, then opinions will naturally shift. In society, the "cause" is much more complex and multifaceted. Models are certainly not the only cause, and allowing women of all sizes to be put up as desirable will not overnight cause people to change their opinions. However, it does contribute and stemming one crack is better than telling the river that it shouldn't flow.
