Tuesday, September 04, 2007

I've not forgotten about "Size 0"

Admittedly my two crusades have been taking the back seat for quite a while. I've written something new about "Killerspiele" not too long ago, but I haven't commented on "Size 0" in ages.


The whole concept of "Size 0" still bothers me a lot, to be honest. I've never been thin (being normal-sized would be nice, though) and I've never wanted to be either - rather unlike a lot of women.

Whenever I see a woman - or more often a young girl - with a good figure saying things like "I really need to loose some more weight, I'm still too fat" I want to jump into the TV (or whatever) and ask "Where the hell do you want to loose weight? Your brain?". That was bad even while I was still a teenager myself, but over the last years, with the blasted "Size 0" and the actresses getting thinner and thinner, it has gotten even worse. I really pity girls these days, their role-models are a lot thinner than those I grew up with - and even they weren't what became of me.


The modern means of manipulating pictures make it even worse, of course. In the past a photograph was, more or less, a precise picture of the object (or person) on it. "The camera doesn't lie" they said - and it was true then. What the lens saw was what you got.

Even then a picture could be manipulated, but then it meant a lot of work - quite usually with a pair of scissors - and a good chance people would see it had been manipulated. Then the computer came and with it - rather soon, at least for those using the Mac - the possibility to manipulate graphics. By now a lot of rather cheap programs can do the same stuff only high-quality, very expensive programs for specialists could do. In other words even I can manipulate every picture to the extreme, if I want to.

I know that, so I don't trust the pictures in the glossy magazines. I know the models there aren't that perfect. I know a specialist has been at work with them, has removed every imperfection the model might have had, has made her look even slimmer and less like an 'ordinary' human being. But the young girls who buy the magazines and want to look like the models don't know. They really believe a human being could look that perfect. And so they diet, they visit the solarium, they spent time, money and quite often health trying their best to look like that - and they can't make it.


Today nobody really knows what will become of this trend. It will, in some cases, take years until the effects on the health and lives of the young girls can be seen. One thing seems sure, though: it's not really healthy. Neither is being overweight like I am, of course, but there's no fashion model making people think being that heavy is fashionable.


"Size 0" should not be worn by grown - or almost grown - women, no matter what fashion designers and the editors of glossy fashion magazines say.

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