Why Is Thin In?

“You can’t be too rich or too thin,” has been attributed to the Duchess of Windsor and since most of us will never be rich, the media is trying to convince us the only way to be desirable is to be thin. Advertisements in magazines, television and billboards always depict thin women as being healthy, youthful and sexy by segmenting our body parts or in our entirety, wearing revealing clothes. As Ramamurthy stated “ ads always represent women as object to surveyed,” for the purpose of “representing women as both passive and objects of sexual desire.”

Susan Bordo believes that our society has become obsessed being thin when she says “our idolatry of the trim, tight body shows no signs of relinquishing its grip on our conceptions of beauty and normality.” When I read Christina Kim’s comments in “Golf for Women” (September/October 2006) magazine that to lose weight she allowed a Korean massage technique to be performed on her wasn’t pleasant. “They’d run upside-down bowls over my muscles using different amount of pressure,” in an effort to reduce body fat. Kim too believes as Bordo writes, “fat is the devil, and we are continually beating him…pummeling and purging our bodies that is why she hired a personal trainer, yoga instructor, dietitian/acupuncturist and massage therapist to whip her into shape.

You might think, well Kim is a professional athlete so what she’s doing is not so extreme but the average women is bombarded by articles like, “How They Lost 100 Lbs!,” in “People” magazine (May 21, 2007) or “How To Keep The Weight Off,” in “Real Simple” (July 2007) magazine or in the same issue an advertisement that ask “the question isn’t can this weight loss program change your life, but can you?,” for the new over the counter diet drug Alli. “Too Stressed To Lose Weight?” says the cover of “Elle’s” December 2006 issue where Susan Orenstein’s article “Fear And Loathing” has a passage that reiterates Bordo’s premises that children are quite aware that being fat is one of the worst things one could be. Orenstein writes, “my best friend in grade school had an obese aunt, and I remember how she was talked about, with rolled eyes and a condescending tone, as if she were almost willfully dysfunctional.”

We’ve all seen the infomercials for exercise tapes like Tae Bo, the before and after photographs of Billy’s followers, extolling us to join them, to buy the tape so we can become slim and therefore happy. Or maybe the sexy girl in the gold bikini in the back of the magazine giving us that come-on look, making us think if you buy and use “Rapid Slim” you can either become her or get her.

I’m not against the obese losing weight but I am tired of people who are at a healthy weight complaining that they are not thin enough. Unfortunately, many have such a distorted image of themselves they can’t see how beautiful they really are.



In respnse to Adangelo100:

I agree with Adangelo100 when he/she states that consumer’s “survey ad’s and try to become the women in those photographs regardless how they are portrayed.” It is unfortunate that many have so little confidence as to what looks good on them, that they try emulate inappropriate examples.

I disagree with Adangelo100 when he/she states that “most of the women shown in ads today are …heroin chic.” The fashion look of ‘heroin chic” has thankful come and gone with the 90’s.

I think Boder’s explanation of the popularity of heroin chic is dead on (pardon the pun) when she concludes that heroin chic is about … being beyond needing, beyond caring, beyond desire…to have given up the quest for fulfillment, to be unconcerned with the body or its needs – or its vulnerability – is much wiser than to care.