renata

I read with dismay Tamika's very revealing and important recent post the other day, about how one of her school peers was brainwashed into idolizing the anorexic appearance of emaciated fashion models. It's disturbing to hear a first-hand account of a young woman seeing such ill-looking, corpse-like models and wanting to emulate them.

Fortunately, however, I'm also seeing evidence that some girls in high school and college are rejecting the media's toxic standards.

Here's a remarkably perceptive article written by a high-school student for her school newspaper.

http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper...Teen_Girls.aspx

She makes some very important points, and I hope that her peers read her article. She questions her fellow students if they actually need to starve and torture themselves, as they've been led to believe. She also commendably recognizes the promotion of a malnourished appearance as nothing but a racket that's designed to sell women products by making them resent their naturally full-figured appearance:


And in an example of journalistic maturity, she asks and answers the question of whether these poisonous media images really do ruin body image. First, she cites the example of the Fijian culture, which was free of eating disorders until the Western media was introduced:


Better still, the young reporter did some investigation of her own and surveyed her peer group:


It's remarkable to see such clear thinking in a high-school-age girl.


Similarly, here's an article on the same topic for a college newspaper

http://northernstar.info/opinion/co...17a4a78c22.html

This writer also takes pains to prove that media images do ruin girls' body image. Neither she, nor the high-school reporter, simply take these things as self-evident, but they go the extra mile to back up the truth of their assertions, lending their work credibility.


Here's a point in the article that I really liked. The writer debunks the idea that emaciated models are effective at selling fashion, pointing out that, if anything, such cadaverous images push women to spend their money on things other than clothing. This is why the plus-size industry should always use truly full-figured models, not the faux-plus variety:


Refreshingly, for a girl in a college setting, where feminist indoctrination is rampant, the writer doesn't blame some nonexistent "patriarchy" but instead acknowledges that normal men prefer plus-size female bodies.


I like the conclusion of the article, with the reporter's firm resolve that the media needs to be changed (not merely that it should change itself, because it never will), as well as the reference to "true beauty," indicating that whatever the fashion industry is pushing today is definitely not truly beautiful.


On the one hand, the fashion industry and the media are more pernicious than ever, and push a standard of appearance that is even more repulsively androgynous and emaciated than ever before. But on the other hand, some girls are recognizing how destructive a force it is and how much damage it has done, and are calling for its reform.

Let's hope that the latter impulse triumphs. If girls at the high school and college age could learn to love their naturally full figures and to eat whatever they like, then this positive self-esteem could sustain them their whole lives and leave them impervious to pro-anorexia propaganda.

Meredith

Continuing this theme, here's a brand-new article from a college newspaper in Wales that makes some very compelling points.

http://www.gairrhydd.com/comment/op...o-feel-terrible

Among them:


Bingo. This is the problem with body-confidence stories in mainstream magazines. They deliver pernicious mixed messages by coupling self-esteem slogans with images of artificial-looking, half-starved bodies. It's a sly way of repackaging a diet ad, basically. Good to see this student seeing through the deception.

But bad as that mixed message is, the following frequently-seen phenomenon in fashion magazines is even worse:


This is sickeningly offensive. "Toned and tanned" bodies look like leather stretched over plastic -- the very opposite of attractive; it's repellent. On the other hand, dimpled flesh is soft and natural and beautiful. No wonder these magazines have to brainwash people with weaselly anti-plus commentary; they know that if the readers were to judge the photos for themselves, they'd find the fuller, plumper bodies more beautiful, and the over-exercised gaunt frames to be ugly.

Like the previous student writers, this reporter identifies the money-grubbing motive behind all this:


No confusion. We once had a society based on ethics and values. We had such a culture for thousands of years, since the time of the Greeks. But a century of cultural Marxism coupled with globalist profiteering has eradicated the traditional, noble, aristocratic values of the West and left in their place the principles of crass commerce.

Best of all, the author even criticizes the use of faux-plus models as self-defeating tokenism. It's encouraging to see this line of criticism moving beyond insider industry discussions and penetrating the mainstream:


But of course, images of cadaverous models are not beautiful; they are grotesque, and as other recent articles posted on the forum have indicated, women may finally be waking up to this deception, this anti-female agenda being conducted by the degenerates who run the fashion industry.

It's encouraging to see such insight from student writers. May these young people go on to make the points even more firmly in the future, and compel this toxic industry to finally reform.

Pamela

The idea of having students expressing size-positive sentiments is admirable. The National Eating Disorder Awareness organization likely had that very thought in mind when it recently organized a contest for girls to create public-service announcements regarding eating disorders.

http://www.openpr.com/news/168775/N...st-Winners.html

This was the concept:


Intriguingly, Whitney was one of the members of the judging panel:


The press release includes the URLs of the various entries. To me, the most interesting is the Second Prize Winner: “Self-Esteem: Breaking the Status Quo,” by Paula Cruz. It's quite impressive, coming from an 18-year-old girl.


The video begins with an idea that I know the Judgment of Paris has always been fond of: the "alternative reality" in which plus-size beauty is celebrated and appreciated. In this better world, the girls in the video state that they love their hips, love their arms, etc. But then the video switches to "our" reality, and shows the girls disparaging their bodies, as girls (sadly) often do, basically comparing nonexistent flaws, including a supposedly too-curvy waist.



The video poses the important question:


Part of the reason, of course, is that the media fosters the negative discourse of the second part of the video, not the positive discourse of the first.

In my opinion, that's one of the reasons why the praise that the Judgment of Paris lavishes on curvy bodies is so important, and is more than just physical appreciation. It creates the conditions wherein women CAN think of themselves as the girls in the first part of the video do, where they admire their plus-size bodies and see themselves as gorgeous, not flawed or unattractive for being naturally full-figured.

Shelley

One thing that I love about reading students' voices on these topics is that they often have a freshness and energy that more mature voices lack.

This recent article from The Corsair, the student newspaper of Santa Monica College, is a great example.

http://www.thecorsaironline.com/opi...ities-1.2209169

It begins with the author recognizing that the cult of emaciation is a relatively recent aberration. This kind of historical perspective is always beneficial, as it dislodges the underweight standard from a position of inevitability and exposes it for what it is: an arbitrary, unnatural fixation.


The author identifies the sheer insanity of self-imposed starvation:


She encourages men to be vocal in their preference for girls with a fuller figure - and I enjoy the zeal with which she denounces the waifs:


It ends on a disappointing mixed message, but hopefully the author will grow out of that bit of brainwashing by the media. Other than that, it's a welcome piece.