[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
JOG wrote:
and, and, think about this: since the camera adds 10 pounds…
That’s why she’s wearing the belt. So you can’t see how chubby her stomach is.[/quote]
She’s probably hiding the twinkies and ho-ho’s under her belt too…
Starving oneself with bulimia or anorexia has existed for ages. It was part of the ascetic life…denying ones body to increase ones spirituality. Interestingly to this site:
“The word asceticism comes from the Greek askesis which means practice, bodily exercise, and more especially, atheletic training.” *
In most religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, for example), ascetics abstained from “worldly pleasures” such as eating and were considered virtuous for it.
Does the lack of religious connotations with these individuals mean our society is more “sick” than previous societies?
Well since I’ll be a mama…here’s my contribution!
[quote]JOG wrote:
and, and, think about this: since the camera adds 10 pounds, and she weighs something less than that[/quote]
The implications of this statement are too horrific for me to bear.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
JOG wrote:
we need a poll:
this thing
a 300 pound fatty
denise masino
Easy. a slow and agonizing death. [/quote]
Yeah. Or celibacy. If those were the only 3 women in the world, I might just be celibate and jack off alot.
[quote]Bic wrote:
Starving oneself with bulimia or anorexia has existed for ages. It was part of the ascetic life…denying ones body to increase ones spirituality. Interestingly to this site:
“The word asceticism comes from the Greek askesis which means practice, bodily exercise, and more especially, atheletic training.” *
In most religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, for example), ascetics abstained from “worldly pleasures” such as eating and were considered virtuous for it.
Does the lack of religious connotations with these individuals mean our society is more “sick” than previous societies?
It’s completely different. In a way, yes. People ‘starving’ for religious conviction may have had their own misguided views but they didn’t have an absurdly distorted body image and also define all self-worth by bodyfat and weight.
Also, rarely did they starve themselves to the point of death. Whereas people with anorexia may get down to 50 lbs. Some are lucky and driven and have the resources to overcome it and recover. More die.
[quote]Miserere wrote:
Magarhe wrote:
One of those models IS photoshopped, the more normal looking one on the couch. I know because I saw the before and after ? she had a pot-belly. They also removed creases in clothes, smoothed her face/slight double chin etc…
This one? That’s actress Kiera Knightley, whom I’ve always found too thin, but not anorexic.[/quote]
Yeah but realise, by pot belly I don’t mean when standing up, just when sitting slouched in a couch - as most people with internal organs look.
Those magazines are really fussy about this stuff, images we are presented with are heavily massaged to take out anything that looks remotely not thin.
Unless they are deliberately trying to make a star look fat and run a “look how fat XYZ is now” article.
Keira is thin but not too thin, she has small boobs, otherwise she is fine, if she had larger breasts you would not think she was thin at all. It is just the small breasts/loooong neck that makes her look really thin.
some of those links to pics are definitely photoshopped - the bodies look stretched and the frames are too small to be real.
i read a really interesting book years ago called ‘the beauty myth’ in which the author points out that as women gained more socio-economic power and freedom (voting, employment, education), social ‘controls’ also increased, such as an extreme media emphasis on physical beauty and thinness.
she doesn’t see it as a conspiracy, but a socio-cultural evolution or adaptation. as a cultural group that was previously disempowered gains power in one realm, the culture adapts another realm to prevent that from happening. basically it just takes a long time for the balance of power to shift totally from one group to a shared power - it’s not as easy as making voting legal for women and legislating equal pay.
culture is a living thing, it’s like a body, imbalances are not easy to correct and a change to one part of the ‘body’ will cause it to change in other ways to preserve the (im)balance that has sustained it.
that said, anorexia is not new. but what is new is the idea that boniness is beautiful. many mental disorders are accompanied by anorexia (the medical term for anorexia differs slightly from the newer manifestation of this disease that we are more familiar with).
the idea of starving oneself leading to spiritual ‘purity’ and even superiority is not new - just popular with a different social group now. but what’s new is this social idea that starving oneself leads to physical beauty as well as moral/spiritual superiority.
i researched this topic years ago, and was fascinated to learn that anorexics tend to consider themselves morally ‘better’ than others because of their ability to deny themselves.
has anyone ever heard of orthorexia nervosa - the obsession with clean eating? the psychological pathology is very similar. many of us have probably treaded closer than we’d like to believe to some of these disorders, which are very much spiritually based as well as cultural.
A lot of these too thin pictures are from a photoshop contest. It’s incredible what can be done.