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Size O
By Madison Lokaria
I was surprised to get an email claiming it was "Beauty Week" on Quondio. It seemed to cement a series of articles and videos that had caught my attention in the past week or so. After careful consideration on my part, here is my take on it all.
First was the story of director Kevin Smith being kicked off a Southwest Airlines plane for being too big. Smith started a flurry of "tweets" on Twitter and quickly became a trending topic. I was surprised to see that most of the responses were positive. I had expected there would be a lot of fat haters clamoring for attention. I had to laugh at a comment posted by someone calling themselves Thin2010:Kevin Smith Too Fat to Fly Southwest. Be healthy lose weight! Diet & boost metabolism safely with MetaboSpeed diet pill." Nope no agenda at all. For years Southwest Airlines has been trying to force overweight people to buy two seats if they want to fly (Kevin Smith purchased two seats) but the enforcement of that rule has been left up to individual employees. I don't believe that any company policy should be left up to employee discretion. It's too easy for personal prejudices to get in the way. Some employee might not find fat people attractive and use his "discretion" to weed out people who fall below his personal beauty scale. A couple of days ago I found an article about an underweight British model being told she's "too big" for London's Fashion Week. The picture showed a gorgeous 17 year old who would probably be consider perfect on any other scale. The problem is her hips their too big to fit into the Size O sample clothes designers use for fashion shows. The head of the modeling agency blamed everything on the "gay mafia" that controls the fashion industry saying they only want to see models with no curves. His homophobia aside, he's not taking responsibility for his agency's part. If all modeling agencies stopped representing stick woman and refused to send models to designers who don't design for the average woman the designers would have to give in or show their clothes on manikins. When did the Western idea of beauty become so narrow? Back in 1889 Lillian Russell was considered the most beautiful woman in America. She weighed 200 pounds at the height of her career. A couple centuries before that having a fat wife was a status symbol because it meant that you were rich enough that she did not have to work. If Marilyn Monroe was starting her career these days she'd be a "plus size" model. She'd have to starve herself to get a leading role in Hollywood. Yesterday I came across Jamie Oliver's TED Talk. He's on a mission to get schools all over the world to start serving healthy meals. He's got a new TV show called Food Revolution where he tackles a town in the US and tries to get good food into schools and people cooking in their homes. I like Oliver. I enjoyed his Naked Chef series a lot. I think the idea of redefining our relationship with food is great. I believe that we have to teach our children about where food comes from and how to cook it. During the talk, Oliver showed some pictures of some of the obese people he was trying to help. I couldn't believe how bad those pictures made people look. There are some angles that don't flatter anyone and Oliver's pictures used them all. I was so sad that he didn't have any pictures of fat people in designer clothes (they do exist) with their hair and makeup done. Those pictures (and the interview snippet with one mother) made it seem as though, if you're fat, you are ugly, sloppy and uneducated. I would like to separate health from aesthetics in the obesity debate. You can be overweight and still be healthy. Health is not a number. You can be a 200 female bodybuilder. Technically overweight but probably healthy. Whether or not you like people who are "nice and round" is a personal thing. Anything that doesn't turn you on isn't ugly or evil. Just because you don't find someone beautiful that doesn't mean no one does. This morning I found a link to ABC's Face Off. The question was "Is it okay to be fat?" I can't believe the question was even asked. What if you replaced "fat" with gay or black or Jewish? It would be offensive. All people have a right to be what and who they are. Just because they don't fit into some arbitrary ideal it doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. We've got to open up our minds and widen our idea of beauty. Everyone is beautiful. We've got to be more accepting or I fear for the future. In 1997, Terry Poulton quoted a survey that found that 11% of people would abort their unborn child if they were told that child had the "obesity gene". It's a scary idea but annihilation is the end point of all prejudice. After thinking about this for a few hours now I'm off to look at Leonard Nimoy's Full Body Project photos of real women and listen to Christina Aguilera's song "Beautiful".
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Contributor's Note
I have provided links to all the source material I used.
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Jamie Oliver's TED Talk
| Underweight Model Told She's Too Big
| ABC Face Off
| Reflecting Venus
| Kevin Smith Furious Over Airline Flap
| Female Bodybuilder Weighs 200 lbs.
| Lillian Russell Wikipedia Article
| Kevin Smith's Twitter
| Leonard Nimoy's Full Body Project
PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE
Exotic Hadron
A personal blog of a 40something woman
exotichadron.blogspot.com
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The copyright for this content entitled "Size O" has been specified by the contributor as:
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If you use this content according to the license specified, you must link to the following URL:
http://madison.qondio.com/
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This intel was contributed by Madison
Madison
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May, 2012
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