Body Image and the media

This post is about an article recently in Marie Claire magazine by blog writer, Maura Kelly. The article is in reference to a new show on CBS called Mike and Molly. The show is about an overweight couple that met at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Ms. Kelly puts in her own words how she feels about fat people making out on TV.

 If you'd like to read the article, here is a link the reprehensible piece of trash...

http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/overweight-couples-on-television

For those of you that don't want to read it, let me quote her

 "So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room"

There were apparently around 30,000 emails to Marie Claire about how rude and uncalled for this article was, yet the editor is standing by the writer. How this article even passed an editors desk, I will never know. Being a writer, especially a writer in a very popular publication, requires some level of common sense. Even if this writer HATES fat people, she has to know there are fat people that read her blog. There are wives of fat men, mothers of fat daughters, friends of fat friends (or as she would call her fat friends "plump"). Even if she wanted to voice her distaste for fat people, there is a more eloquent way of doing so, instead of acting like a 3rd grader on the playground saying "fatties are soooo grossssssss".

It is exactly these kind of articles that give people, young girls specifically, self esteem issues. We cannot keep conveying to girls that they have to look like the models in magazines to be good enough. You do not have to have blonde hair, big boobs, a flat stomach, and long legs to be good enough. When is TV going to start depicting "the average girl". The average size in the US is a 12. How many shows can you name with a woman that is bigger than a 6? 

Just the other day I was looking at a plus sized clothing catalogue. Even to sell plus size clothes they use women that are not what I think of when I hear "plus sized". I went to Lane Bryant's website and pulled this picture of one of their models. This is what a company that sells only big lady clothes, considers fat....

Seriously? This woman is far from even being chubby. She seems like a very average body type. Thin legs, thin arms, nice waist. Why is it that even the company catering to larger women won't use a larger woman to sell their items?

I am by no means advocating being overweight. It is obviously not healthy, but I think as a society we should accept that the majority are above their ideal weight. We have to stop being so cruel to anyone that has a little extra weight. We have to stop obsessing over the photoshopped images on the front of magazines. We cant look at Madonna and think that is what a 50+ year old should look like. It's not.

I just want there to be some recognition of the "everyday girl", so that our kids don't grow up thinking they have to resemble what they see on TV. I want girls to embrace the fact that their unique. I want girls to grow up being confident in who they are and be able to look at an article like the one written in Marie Claire and know that that lady's opinion is not the general consensus.

Women of every shape and size are beautiful. Tall, short, blonde, brunette, skinny, chubby, black, white, blue eyes, brown eyes, short hair, long hair.....we are all unique, and we are all beautiful in some way and to someone. I hope that we as women can feel that within ourselves, and teach that lesson to our kids as well. Nobody is perfect, but as long as we are confident in ourselves, that is all that matters.