Kaitlynn

I think the row over the Madrid ban of emaciated models has now spilled over into a general popular uprising against the media's tyranny of thinness. Frankly, it's about time. I think the discussions of the ban, and the lame excuses peddled by the fashion industry for their fetish for thinness (lame especially in the face of model deaths, and the rampant spread of anorexia), have finally helped people realize that they needn't put up with having their culture dictated to them.

People are realizing that they have a stake in the culture, that they can't escape it- nor can they shield their daughters from it.

I found an article today (with a great title) that expresses the anger than many of us have felt about this topic for years. But it's not merely a list of complaints, it's also a call to action.

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/p...D=2006610120315

The writer calls for an end to the hegemony of underweight celebrities, and more importantly, the popularization and promotion of actresses and models who do look curvy.

Relevant text below:

..................

All you celebrity skeletons, keep your disorders away from our children

Susan Reinhardt

October 12, 2006 12:15 am

Enough is enough. I can no longer engage in my current passion of reading trash-zines in the grocery store line.

Used to be scanning was a pleasure...These days, we can't read or stare at covers without gasping in utter bone yard horror.

What's out there now is so sickening I turn my eyes from the stands and make SURE my third-grader doesn't see it.

"EAT! EAT! EAT!" I want to scream at the tabs featuring cadavers in Versace, their undernourished bodies giving them that watermelon-head look.

I felt my blood pressure rise upon seeing the frightening likes of Victoria Beckman, Nicole Richie, Keira Knightley, Kate Bosworth, and "Anna-rexic" Kournikova, the once healthy tennis star. The Olsen twins were bad enough, and now every starlet is DEAD set on becoming a living, breathing double-zero who can exist on air, compliments and Starbucks - hold the milk products and anything not called triple espresso...

Hollywood women, always cutthroat competitive, have for some inane reason decided to outdo each other by seeing who can stay alive while eating three bean sprouts, two bites of tofu, 64 cigarettes and two leaves of lettuce per day.

The result is the most staggering set of images since the textbook we had in nursing school featuring photographs of real people suffering anorexia nervosa, a dangerous and very deadly eating disorder in which victims think they're f** and quit eating.

I was hoping beauties such as Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones, along with other curvy queens like J. Lo and Kate Winslet, had tipped Hollywood's scales in favor of healthy bodies.

This lasted a few years. Then thin was in again, along with the constant media images of actresses barely alive on the red carpets during their movie premiers.

What's the deal? Does one need to be 5-foot-8-inches and weigh 80 pounds to slink around at these premiers? Get some popcorn, Lindsay Lohan. Eat a Butterfinger, Keira.

Why, their spines stick up like something dug up from the bone collection at the Smithsonian.

It's a sick competition and I wonder how many of these once cute girls realize they actually resemble Gollum from "Lord of the Rings"...?

This, people, is cause for alarm and evidence of what the entertainment industry is doing to our babies.

Let's boycott the bones and vote in gals who know their way around a Duncan Hines factory.