anorexia and skinniness

i just saw THIS article on the clayboard. it's something in response to a magazine article about being rail thin in hollywood. (my 2cents worth. excuse me if i'm rambling.)

i fully agree with this response. hollywood and the media is portraying an image that's not healthy for people these days. why is there this thinking that the thinner you are, the better you are? some people don't even look good skinny for goodness sakes. remember nicole richie? she who went round with paris hilton? gosh. she's so skinny now, it's unbelievable. she used to look ok back then. but now? yuck. why do people think that skinny emancipated people look good? in that case, then all the starving people in africa can become supermodels.

i knew someone who had on-off anorexia. whenever she gained the least bit of weight, she'd starve herself to get it off. and it was bad for her. she fell sick so easily, she'd be unwell in class, the rest of the class would have to take care of her. all because of a entirely unfounded thought that she's fat. i'm not exactly blaming her. i'm blaming what influenced her to be as skinny as she possibly can. the images that being thin is being beautiful.

sure, a certain amount of slimness is good. it gives people the impression that the person is healthy and has a good lifestyle. most of the thin people i see, that i think look good are those athletes. look at the supermodels, say, claudia schiffer, heidi klum (the only few models i know), they are slim, not thin. and they look good ya? imagine if they're stick thin, they won't look the same. it won't be beauty anymore. i just have to say this, those slimming adverts with fann wong etc, well, those celebs are already slim to begin with. any slimmer and they'd blow away in the wind. is that a good thing?

of course, that doesn't give people the right to say that fat is good either. being overweight is also a problem but becoming anorexic isn't the way to solve it. weight is a problem for me most of the time. and trust me, getting anorexia is a highly tempting way to lose weight, but it's not worth it. i mean, is it worth starving yourself, and feeling perpetually hungry, just to lose a few kilos? it's not healthy anyway. you'd fall sick in the meantime.

imagine if a fat person suddenly loses a whole lot of weight through anorexia, or bulimia or lyposuction. won't it look weird, the skin will still have the shape of fatness. yuck. imagine the extra skin hanging around. won't it better to exercise the fat off, then you'll look more toned in the process.

anyway, the root of the problem is probably the perception that fat is bad, thin is good. that in order to be rich, famous and beautiful, you have to fulfil a certain stereotype which is basically to be underweight. and the media is using this stereotype to perpetuate the myth further. how many really famous celebrities are fat? even those who were fat went to lose weight. remember olinda? all those beautiful people on tv are skinny.

i agree with the article that "the entertainment industry is irresponsible". the dangerous effects of anorexia have been medically proven time and again. and yet, the media still continues to deceive people that it's ok to be skinny and be anorexic to achieve that goal. the irresponsibility is that the industry doesn't seem to realise that it is a role model for their audience. the entertainment industry is a powerful tool in spreading mesages, good or bad. and majority of their audience are likely to be youths who are at their most impressionable stages. with a role model like that, can we help but wonder what youths these days are learning?

but this is not to be a holly-weird bashing session. what the article was trying to say is that beauty is not just what's on the outside. it's the inside that counts. remember the movie "shallow hal"? how the very overweight girl turned out to be the perfect girl inside? and all those stereotypically pretty girls turned out to be horrible hags? i know it's cheesy, but maybe the media should expound stuff like this instead of just superficial, on the surface beauty. external beauty will fade. people can't be skinny forever. but what's on the inside is what counts.