Young Writers Society

Very unattractive...super-skinny girls are a huge a turn-off. For me, that is.

Not that I'm into overweight chicks or anything, but being skeletal like that is just gross.

Also, a lot of you girls are saying that the ideal woman is one who is very skinny, but I disagree. Yes, this may be how the media portrays things, but in real-life most guys are far less critical. At least the ones that aren't assholes.

Only a 4 year old girl can be THAT thin and yet not have bones jutting out. That looks like a normal person in big pants, but the picture was > [] < photoshopped.

Stuff like this makes me angry.

I guess maybe I am overweight, I'd love to have thinner thighs and sharper hips, but I wouldn't like to look like that. I'm pretty happy with my upper body, I'm told I have a lovely waist and neck, and I'm content to leave the miniskirts aside on days when I feel self-conscious.

Pictures like that are unrealistic and pry on us, as susceptible as we are. I was sitting reading a magazine with some friends and we saw a picture of a girl who was anorexic and looked completely awful. What I was shocked about was that one of the girls said "I wish I was that skinny."

Another girl in my room, if she goes to breakfast won't go to dinner and vice versa.

The thing is, being too skinny is bad for you. Most girls probably know the stories, you stop getting your period (which isn't as good a thing as it seems, when you think about it), you lose your energy, you get fatigued, you get colder much more easily, you're more susceptible to illness...

And yet we still obsess. As Snoink points out, adverts like these are trying to tell us that we need to be that skinny...

As the boys have pointed out, skinny girls tend to not be very attractive. It's the curvy ones that most guys go for- not the grossly overweight but the nice figured ones.

So it's just other women we feel the pressure from, and they don't want anybody to be too skinny either.

So who do we really blame? The media, enviddement.

Cheers to organisations like Milan Fashion Week that have banned super-skinny models, that's exactly what we need.

I'm thirteen years old and hit puberty when I was nine so I've always been a bit larger than my friends. I never noticed it before, and I was really happy to be so curvy. Unfortunately, I watch tv now and then, and I have grown to hate my body. All of those people telling girls to be skinny have obviously never walked in an anorexic's shoes.

The reasons I know this is because I am struggling with an eating disorder. Isn't it sad that our society is causing, really, young girls, to force themselves to be skinny? It's horrible, but when I saw that picture, I felt a horrible surge of envy.

*hugs beautyandthefish*

Eating disorders suck big time. I'm trying to get over one now... it's not your typical eating disorder because it's due to stress of school and not stress of body image, but that doesn't make it any less terrible. It really drains you from all your energy and the worst part is that it's not so simple as just eating more simply because your body *can't* eat more. You have to retrain your body on how to eat food. And, of course, the stress of not eating causes the other stress to go up, and it's really vicious. So yeah. I sort of hate it.

Aw, thanks. *hugs snoink*

I don't think life is meant to be this hard.

Oh, wow! That's absolutely disgusting!
I was on Facebook the other day, and this girl from my school showed a picture of her stomach, like the picture above. I mean, I was horrified - I just wanted to scream, "Eat some food, girl!" And what's worse, she got positive feedback. "Wow, are you really that skinny?" "Ugh, I hate you, you're so pretty." Her confidence boosted, she posted another picture, and the feedback wasn't so great, "Eat some food!" "You're too skinny." "That isn't healthy." It was mainly because the second picture was worse than the first.
Anyway, Snoink is absolutely right - these ads are only ploys to make young girls feel insecure so that they will buy their products. Everybody's beautiful in their own way - and beauty is based on opinion, so if you actually think being that skinny makes a girl pretty...

~*Sara*~

Inksplatter wrote:Amen!
People should take 'fat' people as they are, and if the 'fat' people go as far to starve themselves, then they are just as bad as those superficial popstars.
The shape of a woman, or a man for that matter is not a relfection of that person and their characteristics.
Just like that saying;
'Don't judge a book buy its cover'

How dare you. Others might take that lightly but I defiantly won't and many of the oldies on this site who knew me would defiantly understand. The main reason to starve to gain control, not to be ultra skinny like the photo-shopped models. To be that skinny is to show yourself that you have that, and if you feel like you are getting too "fat" then you have lost that control you try so hard to gain. To say something like that and not know your facts disappoints me. This might not be everyone's case but it was certainly mine and plenty of others I knew.

Yes this is advert is outrageous and it certainly makes me raging that adverts like this are allowed to be advertised. But honestly, I do know people who are similar to that picture, and she doesn't starve herself, infact she's the complete opposite and get extremely happy when she finds a bit of flab on herself.

Thanks for this thread, Snoink. I'd like to post this ad I found on YWS (no, it's not the createspace guy):

In case you can't read it, it says "You're Fat! But you don't need to be!"
This is just one example of the ridiculous ads that we see all the time.

Thank you so much for making this post, Snoink.

THe media in this country is sp ****ing sick it makes me want to cry. Seriously.

People should take 'fat' people as they are, and if the 'fat' people go as far to starve themselves, then they are just as bad as those superficial popstars.

Just as bad as superficial popstars? Who are you to judge? Until you have experienced the full force of an eating disorder, the relationships that it destroys, the life that it consumes, and the years it takes to recover, I don't really think you have the right to call anyone who starves themselves superficial. By the way, I think it's pretty superficial of you to judge people who are skinny.


I agree with Snoik, it's ridiculous that we can't even use the Internet without being bombarded with companies trying to make us feel bad about ourselves.

And yeah, people who have eating disorders are not necessarily superficial. In my experience (with other people's EDs) it's not just about being skinny but about control, like Emma said, and alot of other factors as well. So don't judge people, yo.

I think it's really sad what the media does to people, as everyone else has basically said. But, I just thought it was ironic that above this thread I saw an advertisment for geting a flatter tummy in only a matter of days!

I used to be/still sort of am really self-conscious about myself, but the other day I was just thinking that I should try to feel more comfortable in my own skin because everyone has problem areas or flaws, but everyone's beautiful in their own way.

And to everyone with eating disorders (the amount of people actually surprised me; I had no idea that would be so common!) I'm so sorry! *hugs!* I wish the best of luck to everyone trying to get over any sort of situation like that. I can't imagine how hard that would be.

And I think the dove comercials that are about helping girls have good self esteem at young ages are so awesome!! I hope more media things begin to do that.

I used to be/still sort of am really self-conscious about myself, but the other day I was just thinking that I should try to feel more comfortable in my own skin because everyone has problem areas or flaws, but everyone's beautiful in their own way.

So true! And about the media thing, while there are still those ads and super skinny Hollywood, there are also Tyra Banks and Jess Weiner (and those dove commercials).

The worst part is, you'd think that when you get out of your teens, it would get better. But it doesn't. I'm 20 and I have a weight problem, mostly because of medication I'm on for severe panic disorder. Despite the fact that I generally eat between 800-1200 calories a day (and do move around quite a lot, though I don't have much time to get to the gym), I'm still overweight, and it's a horrible, horrible feeling.

Even worse--I've had many people tell me that I am attractive, and that they were interested in me, but I cannot believe them because I've been told time and again--since I was a small child--by the media that anyone who wears more than a size 6 is a monster.

I wonder how these people live with themselves, knowing that they're destroying not just childhoods, but whole lives.