In which alexia's blog becomes a social commentary. Apparently.
All of these programmes about bad diet are vaguely irritating. No. Scratch that. They are irritating.
There's a huge double standard in the media these days. On the one hand, there is the huge backlash against overly skinny celebrities, for altering women's idea of an ideal body image and increasing the numbers of people suffering from eating disorders. Just this last week there have been calls for the designers at London Fashion Week to cease to use models with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of less that 18 (a healthy BMI is between 21 and 25; most catwalk models are 15-18). Magazines like Cosmopolitan, New Woman, Marie Claire all devote feet of column space to denouncing skinniness and promoting a healthy lifestyle and diet.
All fair enough so far. These diet programmes though...
There are so many of them these days. Gillian McKeith, how much you have to answer for. However, in all of these programmes, I have never yet seen one edition which highlights an individual who eats badly by not eating. Not eating can be just as damaging as over-eating; it is often just as much a diet choice as over-eating. Why then, is Gillian McKeith not hoofing over hills to tackle the teeny sized women one sees every where, in size six jeans with legs like sticks and protuding chest bones?
There seems to me to be something fairly voyeuristic about these shows; voyeuristic and also, freak show-ish. There is an inescapable element of the stocks. The fat people of Great Britain are being pilloried for their dietary choices - is there something unacceptable about doing the same for the obscenely thin? Society at large seems to delight in extremes these days - extremes of sexuality, extremes of violence, extremes of size. Thiness though, has somehow become a taboo subject. Little Britain uses fat as a cheap gag - I can't see a skeletal Bubbles causing the same belly-laughs.
The Western world is out of balance - the richest people are also the thinnest and the poorest are obese. Perhaps the attitudes to fat and thin are still throw-backs from a previous time, when to laugh at someone whose bones were showing was merely to rub salt into the wounds of their daily life, while the rich and the powerful were tubby and "capon-lin'd"? However, the fact remains that shows like You Are What You Eat are simply making it ok for the judgementalism levelled at overweight people to be continued.
Being thin does not necessarily equal being healthy. Even without the dramatic forms of weight loss excessive dieting can cause, people who are thin and yet who eat high levels of saturated fat are just as likely to suffer from liver disease and heart disease amongst others.
So Gillan McKeith and your ilk, with your catchy programme title and fashionable "detox" fad. Yes, you, you little ratty woman who is possibly the worse advert for your diet ever being scrawny, sickly-looking and bad-tempered. I know I can't place all the problems of the body obsessed Western world upon your shoulders but bloody hell woman, shut the hell up and don't perpetuate the problem.
There's a huge double standard in the media these days. On the one hand, there is the huge backlash against overly skinny celebrities, for altering women's idea of an ideal body image and increasing the numbers of people suffering from eating disorders. Just this last week there have been calls for the designers at London Fashion Week to cease to use models with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of less that 18 (a healthy BMI is between 21 and 25; most catwalk models are 15-18). Magazines like Cosmopolitan, New Woman, Marie Claire all devote feet of column space to denouncing skinniness and promoting a healthy lifestyle and diet.
All fair enough so far. These diet programmes though...
There are so many of them these days. Gillian McKeith, how much you have to answer for. However, in all of these programmes, I have never yet seen one edition which highlights an individual who eats badly by not eating. Not eating can be just as damaging as over-eating; it is often just as much a diet choice as over-eating. Why then, is Gillian McKeith not hoofing over hills to tackle the teeny sized women one sees every where, in size six jeans with legs like sticks and protuding chest bones?
There seems to me to be something fairly voyeuristic about these shows; voyeuristic and also, freak show-ish. There is an inescapable element of the stocks. The fat people of Great Britain are being pilloried for their dietary choices - is there something unacceptable about doing the same for the obscenely thin? Society at large seems to delight in extremes these days - extremes of sexuality, extremes of violence, extremes of size. Thiness though, has somehow become a taboo subject. Little Britain uses fat as a cheap gag - I can't see a skeletal Bubbles causing the same belly-laughs.
The Western world is out of balance - the richest people are also the thinnest and the poorest are obese. Perhaps the attitudes to fat and thin are still throw-backs from a previous time, when to laugh at someone whose bones were showing was merely to rub salt into the wounds of their daily life, while the rich and the powerful were tubby and "capon-lin'd"? However, the fact remains that shows like You Are What You Eat are simply making it ok for the judgementalism levelled at overweight people to be continued.
Being thin does not necessarily equal being healthy. Even without the dramatic forms of weight loss excessive dieting can cause, people who are thin and yet who eat high levels of saturated fat are just as likely to suffer from liver disease and heart disease amongst others.
So Gillan McKeith and your ilk, with your catchy programme title and fashionable "detox" fad. Yes, you, you little ratty woman who is possibly the worse advert for your diet ever being scrawny, sickly-looking and bad-tempered. I know I can't place all the problems of the body obsessed Western world upon your shoulders but bloody hell woman, shut the hell up and don't perpetuate the problem.