Are you vampishly curvy, with a nipped in waist, large pendulum hips and a bust line to make the boys blush? Are you athletic, like Gisele, straight up and down with the merest whiff of a waist line? Or are you like most people, average? Neither curvy nor straight up and down, just normal. Bit of a waist here, throw in perhaps a little too large a hip there and a bust line you wish could be perkier but you just don't know how to do it? Well you know what, it's high time we put an end to this nonsense, it doesn't matter if you are fat, thin, curvy, athletic, slim, podgy, whatever you are and whatever shape, make and form you come in, stop caring about it!
I for one, am sick of every second paper and magazine I pick up telling me that curves are back and how skinny girls can eat s*** because curves have triumphed over skinniness. I have just spotted an article in the Daily Mail (I know, I know, I'm sorry, don't hold it against me) which had a headline blaring "Bad luck Skinny Girls! Marilyn Monroe is crowned best beach body of all time". My mouse cursor hovering over the article, I was about to click on it, when something clicked in my head instead. This exercise of pitting body types against each other for global domination is all a bit KKK hunting down black people for reasons of superiority. OK, maybe not as extreme as people being killed and treated like second class citizens for being a different colour but it's up there folks, with the same hate tag line as racism has. Write an article lambasting someone for their race or colour, and you will and should rightly be pegged as a racist. Write an article about socking it to possibly naturally skinny women and you are credited as an actual journalist. What if I were a journalist, and decided that white skinned women are the best in the world, took a poll backing up my claim and then published an article in a widely read newspaper saying "Bad Luck Black/Hispanic/Latina/Asian girls! Whites are voted best yadda yadda yadda..." I would be strung up by the neck and so say all of us. How can people get away with this? And why do we let them?
It infers that skinny people are deemed uglier or inferior to so called curvy people. How awful of a sentiment is that? If you had a child, would you teach it this twisted and warped view of the world and how we see people? Comparing this type of judgement to racism may seem harsh, but judging people like that and side-lining people who might not have Marilyn Monroe proportions is just plain wrong and shouldn't be encouraged. But it is, every single day when someone like you or me clicks on a link and reads it, or picks up a magazine and gives Heat their hard earned £1.95 to dissect what someone looks like on the beach. We, as humans, are programmed to judge on appearance, it's genetic and we are all designed to think that way. So true, we may not be able to change nature in that respect, but we can stop the daily barrage of being told that skinny equals bad and curves equals good, skinny to be admonished and curves to be celebrated. How about people equals bad and people equals good? Or, maybe judging on actions rather than say, oh I don't know, waist size?
Some are fat, some are skinny, some are slim, some are plump, some are obese, some are anorexic, but at the heart of it all, some are always people, and that's how they should be treated, celebrated, maligned whatever you want to do with them. To tell a section of people that they're out of luck and only a certain section is superior because of how they look echoes dark racist times in the Deep South of 50's and 60's America. And while we may have moved on in terms of race, it seems the media world is never going to grow up and move on from trumping one section over another, lauding plus size models one day, and then giving them literary death sentences the next for having a "muffin top". How would you feel if you, as a naturally skinny person, you were told point blank that the way you look is bad luck, and that a particular group over there is prettier, more attractive to the opposite sex and more en vogue that you will ever be because they have curves and you Skinny Minny don't. Think about it. Think about it from the other side, if you were particularly plump say, or in fact just fat, how would you feel to see a headline that said "Bad luck Fatso" etc etc You would, you would feel awful. Why do we tolerate this bullying attitude of what a few people sitting at computers think the ideal and the norm should be? Why do we go one step further and maybe even believe their claims?
I've always loved the celeb magazines, I freely admit it, but lately, in fact the last year or so, I have cut down, to the point of buying one every few months when I am in the mood for fish food for the brain. From seeing this article's headline, it has prompted me to not want to look at the Daily Mail website ever again. However, I cannot in all good conscious do that, the Femail.co.uk section of the Daily Mail provides me with much mirth making entertainment that it will continue to be part of my day. I won't however, be purchasing a Heat, Now, OK!, Hello! or any women aimed magazine for the rest of the year. I'm not going to entertain or acknowledge an article or publication that seems to hate women and objectify people on their looks and looks alone.I know I cannot radically overhaul the way I think as nature will out, but I'm going to do my best to stop judging people on how they look and first appearances. I wasn't alive in the Good Ol Racist days to take a stand against it, but I am alive and kicking in these sad times, so here's my contribution.
p.s. To read a far superior take on this issues, please follow this link to this amazing lady:
http://dazedandbemusedmusic.blogspot.com/2011/10/amy-winehouse-she-walks-away-sun-goes.html
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