nice to hear dudes don't want twigs.
Tyra's chubby-is-beautiful crusade rings hollow
| Edmonton Journal |
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Not only is Tyra now on the cover -- looking all sleek and bikini-clad -- of pro-slender Shape magazine, but all of the finalists on her show America's Next Top Model are various shapes of skinny, skinny and skinny.
If you look at Tyra's words, as opposed to her actions, there's no doubt she has talked a good -- and undeniably feel-good -- game when it comes to bashing the fashion industry for pushing skinny models on the public, as opposed to hiring more normal-looking, plus-sized beauties for magazine spreads and runway shows.
She recently launched a campaign called,"So What!", which is apparently the proper comeback to shout out if someone criticizes her or any other woman for being too portly.
And this year, on her show, America's Next Top Model, Tyra even picked two plus-sized models to be in the Final 12.
But those two bigger girls are now long gone, and the competition is down to the survival of the slimmest.
One finalist, Jaslene, is the kind of curves-challenged model that most guys absolutely do not find attractive, but for some reason is invariably featured in the most high-brow of fashion magazines, which tend to be run by wraiths cloaked in Prada. (Presumably a sizable percentage of women must also secretly yearn to view these ultra-slim models, otherwise the magazines would go out of business, as did Mode, the one magazine devoted to plus-sized models.)
In the Top Model competition, Jaslene has had as many first-place finishes as her next closest competitor, Natasha, who is by far the most curvy of the finalists, and the one who would easily be the choice if any red-blooded male picked the winner.
Hell, if a guy were picking the winner, he would also go for a Jordin Sparks, a plus-sized model and the star of this year's American Idol, over any of the Jaslenes of the world, and I'm not saying that to be nice or politically correct, but to hammer home the point that men prefer women to be curvier than the weirdly thin, fashion-magazine ideal.
But, of course, red-blooded males don't pick the winners in the fashion industry. It's run by high-society ladies who think a stick of cheddar cheese is a sinful dose of junk food.
So why is it that bone-thin models are so favoured in the fashion industry? And, in a more general sense, are the fashion editors engaged in a conspiracy to make chubby folks feel bad, or are they merely reflecting a deeper truth about what is now attractive?
It's often been said that as we all get fatter, fashion models get thinner.
One convincing theory for the trend is that in the past, during the endless centuries of scarcity and famine, biological health -- the ability to produce healthy, thriving children -- was equated with being heavy. It was consequently seen as sexy to be portly. That is why poets and artists of past eras were so enthusiastic about women who would now be seen as in need of a diet.
Today, however, there's no shortage of food in the developed world. We live in the age of quick and easy calories. Anyone can be fat. Only the disciplined, the health-conscious and, possibly, the genetically lucky, are thin. So, today, like it or not, biological health is equated with slenderness. Thin is in.
The modern notion that fat equals poor biological health has been reinforced by science, an endless array of studies linking overweight and fat to numerous and serious health problems. If anything is putting the brakes on the feel-good Tyra-led, plus-sized model crusade, it is this health argument, which is too convincing to be denied.
It's worth noting that Tyra really started pushing her plus-sized ideas this winter when she was blasted for being too heavy herself. Since then, however, she's taken steps to change, as is reflected in her appearance in Shape, a bible of the fitness-obsessed.
In her Shape interview, Tyra stresses that she wants everyone to eat healthy foods, and admits she recently hired a part-time chef so she could eat better. "I realized I needed to take better care of myself," she said, adding that whole months went by when she didn't exercise. She has recently turned that around as well, she said, and is working out hard.
So Banks has rediscovered what we all know all too well and struggle with endlessly in our own lives -- that eating healthier and exercising more is the only real answer to the inconvenient truth that fat isn't beautiful. It's unhealthy.
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