(Photo:Robert Maxwell)

Dara Torres, still an Olympic contender at age 41, has been touted as the “physical ideal for mothers, women at or approaching middle age, and just women in general.’’ While it gives me great pleasure to see a 40-something female athlete achieve at an Olympic level, I find the notion that her body is the physical ideal for “women in general” a little extreme, even in this age of extremes in body image. And why does the media always make body image a competition: ‘See, since this woman is ripped and lean at 41, you should all be ripped and lean at 41.’

This woman is clearly a professional athlete, and as such, devotes her entire life to working on her body. According to the New York Times, Torres spends $100,000 a year on support staff alone–coaches, trainers, etc.–to compete at an Olympic level. For $100,000 a year she’d better have an athletic body!

I’ve read two very interesting articles in regard to Dara Torres as a body and fitness ideal for women:

1. Dara Torres: The New Beauty Myth, at The-F-Word.org is a great commentary on what goes into sculpting a body the likes of Torres”–working out is her full-time job.

2. Olympic Abs vs. Simple Fitness, in The New York Times, which suggests another candidate for female “physical ideal”: 80-year old Estelle Parsons, weights in hand, who maintains a diverse, physically active exercise regime and is still going strong.

(Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

I think that both of these women are amazing. Why does there have to be an “ideal” at all? How about finding what’s “ideal” for the individual? As women, we can celebrate Dara Torres (and Estelle Parsons) without feeling diminished by our own bodies.

Congratulations to Whitney on becoming America’s Next Top Model (I wish I had a picture of her in that pink Versace dress from the finale). My favorite line from tonight’s episode comes courtesy of the make-up artist preparing Whitney for the final runway show:

You’re the first juicy booty to make it to the runway.

All season long, Whitney has been referred to as the “plus-size” model. Tonight Tyra corrected that term and said that she was the “full-figured” model. Whitney has curves, but she’s neither plus-sized or full-figured. Still, I’m glad a woman with a more ”average” sized body will have a chance to be in the media as a representation of beauty. I’ll be curious to see what kind of media coverage she receives as the first full-figured winner.

Is 4-foot 9-inch 10-year-old girl who weighs 84 lbs fat? According to Nintendo’s Wii Fit game, she is. Wii Fit’s “fat” or “fit” is based solely on BMI. This young girl is active–she swims and dances–yet she is declared not just “unfit” but “fat” by a video game.  The article below reports that the girl in question is “devastated” to be labeled “overweight.”  And rightly so. This is such a delicate age for body image issues–and being called fat by your video game is just the kind of thing that triggers serious body image issues.

This is just one more example where BMI does not accurately represent health and fitness.

(Source:Pocket-lint)

Could Wii Fit create bad body image?

Concerns after game labels young girl “fat”

NEWS: 7 May 2008 15:32 GMT by Verity Burns

Parents on an online forum have expressed concerns over Nintendo’s Wii Fit creating a bad body image, particularly with young girls.

The controversy was sparked after a user complained that the game labelled her relative overweight.

“My [relative] came round this weekend and we let her play on our Wii Fit”, she wrote. “We have all laughed and joked about being told that we’re fat and need to lose weight but I was gobsmacked when it told her that she is overweight.”

According to the poster, the girl in question is a healthy 4-foot 9-inch 10-year-old who swims, dances and weighs only six stone [US 84 lbs]. “She is solidly built”, the poster adds, “but not fat”.

Apparently the young girl was “devastated” to be labelled as overweight.

The poster added: “I know it is just a game but seriously we already have to worry about young girls starving themselves to look like the magazine models and now we have a game that tells them they’re fat”.

Forum users have replied with varying responses, many angrily and backing the poster’s decision to write and complain to Nintendo (they are yet to reply).

However as one forum member pointed out, Wii Fit merely utilises the internationally-used BMI scale to calculate whether a user is overweight or not, and so Nintendo cannot be held responsible for the outcome.

BMI is considered by some to not be the best way to measure weight as it does not take into account frame or muscle.

I’ve been so busy that I almost missed it–Tuesday [not Monday, as previously stated] is International No Diet Day. The goal of the day is to encourage “women of all ages to collectively reflect on the importance of diets and on our society’s obsession with thinness.” No Diet Day was established in 1992 by Mary Evans Young, the director of the British anti-diet campaign “Diet Breakers.”

A great way to celebrate No Diet Day is to check out the fascinating blog, NotDieting.com. The blog is one young woman’s social experiment on what it means to NOT diet for a year. Her take of the pressures of body image and eating are insightful and interesting. She is not advocating unhealthly eating, in fact, she is pursuing healthier eating habits by purposely not dieting (and to me that says it all). Here’s a little of her story:

Some of you may be thinking: who is this crazy nut that is not dieting for one year?

Well, this crazy nut is 28 years old and has spent more than half her life on a diet. In fact, this is the first time since I was 12 that I have been NotDieting for any period of time. Since the age of 12 my life can be placed in two categories, dieting and overeating after the diet.

Strangely, I have never been overweight. I remember reading my mom’s Vogue magazines when I was 7 or 8 years old and hoping, praying that one day I would be as beautiful as the models in the picture. I thought they must have perfect lives, filled with happiness and love. My own mom always told me I was beautiful and gave me lots of love, but the glossy pages were too seductive.

I don’t blame the magazines themselves. I’m sure there are plenty of young girls who have glanced through the very same pages I once did without feeling completely inadequate. Aren’t there? Anyway, I often wonder what would happen if I hadn’t been exposed to media that glorifies physical perfection. Well, my skin would be pretty pasty because I’d have to live underground in order for that to happen! Today it is more prevalent then ever and equally dangerous.

I, too, like to live dangerously and I suspect that if you have made it to the bottom of this article, so do you. Let’s blow this diet pop stand together and have a life filled with happiness and love, our way.

And for anyone who is/has been a life-long dieter, her article on eating cereal is priceless.

So, on this International No Diet Day, I wish the hostess of NotDieting.com much success in No Diet Year.

First: Forgive the vanity of this exercise.

Second: Apologies to the guy I met last week who hates it when people turn nouns into verbs. If he thinks “Google” shouldn’t be used as a verb–as in, “I Googled it”–then he’ll pass out if Spanx becomes a verb.

Am I a sell-out if I wear Spanx? I rarely wear them–I figure, I’m curvy and cinching in my gut and my hips an inch or so isn’t going to make a difference. However, I do have the occasional outfit that I believe looks more refined with the addition of some shapewear underneath.

At the Clinton Kelly event, he really pushed the idea of shapewear, so I decided to conduct an experiment. I wore the same dress (3 part construction–defined bust, defined waist, and a skirt that flows away from the body–à la What Not to Wear) two days in a row, one day with Spanx, one day without. The Spanx clearly takes away some of the width of my hips, but does it really matter? What do you think: Spanx, No Spanx?

Spanx/No Spanx

Victoria, Australia has created a “Voluntary Media Code of Conduct” through its Department of Planning and Community Development Office of Youth.  The Media Code of Conduct was released in July 2007, but I’m only hearing about it now (Aussie state moves to stamp out unrealistic body imagery, TV3 News).

The mission of the Code of Conduct:

The Code is designed to encourage the fashion, media and advertising industries to place greater emphasis on diversity, positive body images and a focus on health rather than body shape.

The Code presents four key recommendations (complete report here):

Altered and Enhanced Images
The use of unachievable and unrealistic digitally manipulated images of people in the media is discouraged. If such alteration has occurred, digitally altered images should be disclosed and accompanied by a ‘tag’ stating that “this image has been digitally altered” to help young people make a balanced appraisal.

Diversity in Shapes
Consideration should be given to the inclusion of a variety of body shapes, to provide fair representation in both editorial and advertising images.

Fair Placement
Consideration should be given to the editorial context in which diet, exercise or cosmetic surgery advertising is placed.

Modeling Health
Glamorisation of severely underweight models or celebrities is potentially dangerous; effort should be made to depict people of healthy weight and size.

Unlike the French proposal (to ban glamorization of  thinness), the code is strictly voluntary and provides no penalties for failure to conform to the rules.

I find these recommendations much more in line with my own philosophy, particularly the goal:”to place greater emphasis on diversity, positive body images and a focus on health rather than body shape.”

I also think that it’s a great idea to “tag” altered images as “digitally altered” (or perhaps “objects may be fatter/wrinkly-er/shorter/older than they appear”).  Even knowing that an image is altered doesn’t change its power to influence; however, the reminder of the plastic nature of the image is something.

Related to this issue, The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) announced changes to the Advertising to Children Code, so as to ban the “sexualization” of children ages 14 and younger.

In a previous post I mentioned Chloe Marshall, a size-16 contestant in the Miss England pageant. Of course, it was bound to happen–London’s Daily Mail (a tabloid-style newspaper) criticized Chloe as “fat, lazy and a poster girl for ill health.” (Click here for a link to the ABC News article Backlash Against Big Beauty Queen.)

OK, that’s to be expected. Of course, the Daily Mail doesn’t rail against Kate Moss as being the ”poster girl for ill health” as an extremely underweight drug abuser. But, again, anytime a woman who is even slightly larger than the acceptable media standard makes any effort at all to publicly claim her beauty, she’s attacked for promoting an unhealthy lifestyle (all of this ignoring the damaging effects to the body of yo-yo dieting and the stress associated with low self-esteem, among others).

But this is the bit that galls me. One female reader, who described herself as 5″ 8′ tall, size 10, who struggles to maintain her weight by running 5K each day and avoiding junk food, wrote in support of the vicious attack on Chloe by saying:

“It makes me mad when people like Chloe are allowed to glamorize obesity, and even worse, make it look like a mentally and physically healthier alternative to watching your weight.”

What gets me about this is two things:

1. “Glamorize obesity?” Really? Come on, now. This always seems to be the charge against any positive media coverage of size acceptance. One kind word about loving even a “normal” body and that’s glamorizing? Then what the hell do you call the media treatment of thinness? Idolizing thinness? Deifying thinness? Canonizing thinness? I don’t think we have a word in our vocabulary.
2. We, the average women of the world, we support, and in fact, enforce, the hatred against ourselves. I feel sorry for this woman–no doubt, she lives under constant pressure to maintain her weight. And that, is sheer torture.

So, I conclude with: Kudos, Chloe. Hang in there, you gorgeous girl.

Today, Valentine’s Day, is the 10th anniversary of V-Day, a day and an organization created to combating violence against women that developed from Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues. The V-Day organization has raised more than $50 million for local anti-violence groups and rape crisis centers.

Eve Ensler and Jane Fonda were interviewed twice today on the TODAY Show, and I appreciated this comment by Jane Fonda on the power of the play:

“I knew that women have a right to our humanity and bodily integrity. I didn’t always live it behind closed doors. But when I saw ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ I never laughed or cried so hard in the theater. I think it was while I was laughing that something happened and I kind of slipped into my body and I really changed.”

If we are fully in our bodies, fully appreciative of our bodies, we will not tolerant bad treatment of said bodies by others or by ourselves.

To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of V-Day, Ensler and company are staging the biggest production of “The Vagina Monologues” in its history. It will take place over two days at the New Orleans Arena and Louisiana Superdome on April 11-12, with a star-studded cast: Jane Fonda, Salma Hayek, Oprah Winfrey, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Hudson, Glenn Close, Julia Stiles, Ali Larter, Sally Field, Marisa Tomei, Calpernia Addams, Rosario Dawson, Kerry Washington, and musicians Common, Eve and Charmaine Neville.

Friend of The Curvy Life, Authentic Beauty, will be providing makeovers for up to 5000 of the women of New Orleans as part of V-Day’s “Superlove” event at the Superdome. The Curvy Life plans to be in New Orleans for the event–if you want to join us, see V-Day 1{0} for details.

I love Kathleen Turner as a fabulous curvy icon. She has been making the rounds with her new book, Send Yourself Roses:Thoughts on My Life, Love and Leading Roles. Give yourself a Valentine’s treat by watching her interview on the Today show (click here) or go and check out her book.

You’ve just got to love the tagline of Multi-Tasking Woman.com: is Redundant.

Kyle Young, founder and CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer) of the site, is creating a community of women:

“that empowers each of them to embrace and celebrate ALL the facets of their lives as a unique whole. There’s so much power in women having the support of each other at every point along their path.”

And I’ve got to love MTW: check out the fantastic profile of The Curvy Life (by clicking here) and the profile of me (by clicking here).

If you are a Multi-Tasking Woman (I know, redundant) head on over to Multi-Tasking Woman.com where you can meet some awesome women (present company included) and share your own Multi-Tasking story.

Anyone who has ever tried to improve her diet by eating more whole foods, more organic produce, and the like can testify to the truth of the New York Times article A High Price for Healthy Food (12/05/2007): calorie for calorie, junk foods cost less than fruits and vegetables.

Of course, we all know that fresh produce is more nutrient rich than junk food; however, junk food tends to be more “calorie dense,” to have more calories per gram, than fruits and vegetables. Thus, by comparing diets strictly by calories,

“a 2,000-calorie diet would cost just $3.52 a day if it consisted of junk food, compared with $36.32 a day for a diet of low-energy dense foods.”

So, the more you try to improve the quality of your diet, the more it is going to cost you. What does this mean for those on limited incomes? As the researcher in the article explains:

“If you have $3 to feed yourself, your choices gravitate toward foods which give you the most calories per dollar,’’ said Dr. Drewnowski. “Not only are the empty calories cheaper, but the healthy foods are becoming more and more expensive. Vegetables and fruits are rapidly becoming luxury goods.”

Health as a luxury item–disturbing indeed.

If you haven’t seen Joy Nash’s YouTube video, “Fat Rant,” it is well worth the 7 minutes it takes to watch. With over a million views since March 2007, “Fat Rant” has generated a lot of public discussion regarding fat women and self-esteem. The YouTube page for the video (as of 1/16/2008) has over 12,000 comments, Joy has been interviewed in the press numerous times, and she now has a “Fat Rant” blog (www.fatrant.com). I love Joy’s clever yet straightforward approach to issues surrounding fat life in a thin-obsessesed world; however, I am always surprised at the venom of those who feel it necessary to attack anyone who stands up and says, “I’m fat and I’m OK.” Why is positive body image and self-esteem in fat women so threatening?

See the video at YouTube or on Joy Nash’s blog, Fat Rant.

The death of Donda West, mother of hip-hop artist Kanye West, has generated a lot of media discussion about the risks and dangers of plastic surgery. There have always been risks associated with plastic surgery, yet you wouldn’t know that from the way plastic surgery is depicted on television. There seems to be an endless variety reality TV shows such featuring plastic surgery: Dr. 90210, Plastic Surgery New York Style, Ultimate Plastic Surgery Before & After, Plastic Surgery Beverly Hills, and Big Medicine. Not being a great fan of the genre, I can’t say for certain, but I would assume that these shows don’t feature a lot of stories where patients die after procedures.

These shows have a powerful effect: a study conducted by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons revealed that “first-time patients seeking cosmetic plastic surgery are directly influenced to have surgery by the plastic surgery reality television shows they watch.” (Click here for details.)

And so it seems, from the number of shows featuring plastic surgery, that everyone is doing it. However, Washington Post writer Robin Givhan has observed an interesting undercurrent in the media coverage of Mrs. West’s death: “the underlying message became that indulging in plastic surgery is inherently selfish and narcissistic,” that people seeking cosmetic surgery are “courting tragedy” and looking for “easy answers.”

Below is an excerpt from her article, “Plastic Surgery’s Allure Cuts Both Ways.” I think that she makes a compelling argument about the messages we receive.

“There’s no way to know what was going through West’s mind. But her death makes one marvel at the way in which popular culture pushes, pushes, pushes people toward an ideal. And then tut-tuts when they take the bait.

No matter that the most conscientious surgeons emphasize that cosmetic surgery cannot transform a patient’s life, the promise remains. With a snip and a tug, faces can be made younger and more attractive. The patients believe they will not only look better but also feel better, which will lead to greater confidence, which will strengthen their cultural currency.

Audiences like nothing more than a beauty makeover. The ugly duckling turns into a swan. Cinderella got a fairy godmother of a stylist and won the heart of the prince. It was beauty that charmed the beast — not the young woman with the scintillating personality.

But beauty makes folks envious. They want to be assured that others work hard to maintain their appearance (even if they’re looking for the easiest ways to maintain their own). Consider the notion of aging gracefully. What does that mean, really? Folks are demanding that the enduring beauty of matrons and dowagers be earned. They want them to maintain a six-day-a-week workout schedule that includes walking on a treadmill to nowhere and a life that is devoid of meat, dairy, alcohol, sunshine, sugar and anything else remotely pleasurable. Is that natural? Is that grace?

There are virtually no women who have the genetic good fortune to arrive at age 60 looking like a Catherine Deneuve, Sophia Loren or Diahann Carroll without a surgeon’s expertise. Most people in the public sphere do something, Botox to boot camp, to fend off the effects of time. They are encouraged and expected to take action. If they don’t, they will be judged harshly. But they must take care not to let the effort show — don’t reveal any hairline scars or improbable perkiness. Otherwise, our judgment will be even harsher.”

“When a girl walks by with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your face…”

…she’s probably pretty smart, or so says a new study just published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

You’ve got to love this quote, based on a summary of the study:

“Curvy women are not only intelligent, attractive and live longer, they also give birth to intelligent children….” (DNA-India)

Scientists studied 16,000 women to determine if there was a measurable link between waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) (the size of the waist in comparison to the size of the hips) and cognitive ability (IQ) of the women and their children. The study revealed that women with hips larger than their waists (think “pear” shape) had higher IQs than women with small hips or linear shapes. The children of big-hipped women also scored higher on cognitive tests.

The researchers suspect that a prevalence of Omega-3 fatty acid, found in female hips and thighs, contributes to the growth of the fetal brain during pregnancy. Belly fat contains more Omega-6 fatty acid. This difference in composition of fat may also explain why, in women, lower body fat seems to have a protective effect on the heart (see Diabetes.org for more on the subject).

Thus, big booties=big brains=big health.

Waist-to-hip ratio is becoming a new area of interest in the study of weight and health. Studies consistently reveal that WHR is a greater predictor of overall health in women than BMI. (To calculate WHR: divide waist measurement by hip measurement–w/h–a measure of 0.8 or less is considered healthy for women. To read more about WHR vs. BMI check out the article, BMI:Freaking out about nothing, on Reuters.com.)

I am curious to see how this study is going to be covered in the mainstream media. Will this study be used to challenge the ongoing and continuous attack on fat bodies, or will it be minimized? Even worse, will this data be used to beat on curvy bellies? It will be interesting to watch.

But in the meantime, let’s take our big hips and big brains and get out there and take over the world!