I’ve always thought those claims about how we ought not to depict skinny models because they cause girls to have low self-esteem were pretty ridiculous. Unless I’m missing something, I see no more reason to believe depicting skinny girls has a negative effect on self-esteem than depicting smart girls does. If girls are supposed to despair because these models are skinnier than they are ever likely to be why wouldn’t they similarly despair when some (not enough) commercials or TV shows show female scientists or other supposedly smart women? Sure aspiring to a level of intellectual achievement beyond one’s ability is surely a more rewarding pursuit than trying to be skinnier than your body type will allow but this is irrelevant to the self-esteem question. While I probably suffer from selection bias I have met very few (probably none but maybe 1 or 2 if you really loosen the notion) women who aspire to look like models. I have known a great many people (including a fair number of women) who had self-esteem issues because they perceived themselves as not being smart enough. It would seem that if the self-esteem argument was valid in the first place it would be even more applicable to the depictions of incredibly smart women. For instance this argument would suggest that the really smart female grade student on Numbers (crime show about a unrealistically attractive math prof) is doing women harm and that they would be better off with the more ‘realistic’ role model of a woman who wasn’t in the smartest 1% of people, i.e., was struggling through grad school. Of course I think the conclusion that we should try and show average women (or men) instead of exceptional ones in the media is absurd but I always found the original argument pretty absurd as well.

Below I argue in some detail that the entire idea of criticizing the choice of skinny women for (high) fashion models shouldn’t have ever seemed like a reasonable position. However, you don’t need to read all the theoretical arguments if you don’t want to because we now have empirical evidence that women actually feel worse about their bodies when they see models who are a tad plump than when they see skinny models (or significantly overweight women). There are many possible explanations of this effect but it doesn’t really matter why. The critique of fashion models as giving women poor body-image didn’t really make sense in the first place and now it is dead in the water.

While we are on the subject of obesity I thought i would also post this interesting link suggesting that it might be a virus that disposes people to get fat. Very interesting if true, hopefully that would mean we could come up with something like an antibiotic for obesity inclinations. Though even with current medical tools I think we could do a great deal to make life better for people who find it hard to stay near their ideal weight. For instance if doctors are willing to prescribe stimulants for ADD just because someone has some difficulty paying attention in school or at their job they should be willing to do the same for people who want to drop down to a more attractive (medically healthy) weight.

Of course a lot of people would object to taking this sort of risk (all medications carry some risk) for something that’s ‘just’ an aesthetic matter. Why the immediate cause of the affliction should make a difference is beyond me, it is the patient who needs to be treated not their foot or their brain and I know in our culture I would much rather suffer with attention deficit disorder than endure the stigma that overweight people live with. Besides ADD isn’t (in most cases) that it is an objective disfunction, if we still lived in caves and hunted game I bet this wouldn’t be much of a problem. The real issue is that ADD makes it hard to achieve in today’s civilized environment where we need not worry about being eaten but do need to worry about paying attention. Yet studies have repeatedly shown that being unattractive significantly reduces career success. Besides career is not the most important thing in the world anyway and we all know that looks make a difference about who you date.

Sure it comes off all noble to say that good looks aren’t all that important and that the medical risks aren’t worth it for ‘just’ aesthetic benefits but unless you are really just as likely to date a person with an extra 30 or more pounds it is just hypocrisy. Insisting that looks aren’t important the way real medical conditions are when it comes to medical treatment but then turning around and making decisions about who to date, befriend or even hire based on looks is just the height of hypocrisy. Of course everyone says they aren’t one of those people who does this sort of thing but the studies don’t lie someone is doing it. Probably we all do it unconsciously and, the same way everyone says they would never have hurt anyone in the Milgram experiment, we all like to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise. However, perpetrating that illusion just isn’t worth the pain it causes. All the medical options we have available should be on the table so the people who are actually doing the suffering can make their own decisions. There is something quite sinister in letting the mostly slender attractive people who rose to the top of their profession decide that giving other people the same advantages that they had isn’t worth the risk.

Ohh and before someone tries to blame this on men let me point out that the last study I linked showed that men and women are equally affected by looks when deciding who to date. The men are just more likely to say looks mattered while the women cite other factors. It seems to me that the choice of particularly thin women to serve as models is just another example of our (reasonable) practice of showing off the most successful/best example of a quality when we wish to show off that property. When we want to show the world what mathematicians are like in a TV show we naturally make them among the smartest and most successful mathematicians. When companies select a sports figure to represent their product of course they pick the best and most accomplished athletes they can (for a given price of course). The exact same thing is going on with models and I see no reason to believe people are any less sophisticated in their response to models than in their response to sports figures. After all being in good shape, good at sports, rich and having high social status are the traits that society tells men are important to have/are necessary to attract the opposite sex and many young men are worried about how they compare in these areas. Thus it seems choosing to use skinny models instead of ‘real women’ is no worse that carrying the professional sports game or interviewing NBA players instead of covering the average guys playing a pick-up game. This comparison remains valid even when we consider the argument that these models gives guys an unrealistic expectation of the female figure. Sports figures, and rappers give women an unrealistic expectation of male fitness, wealth and social status.

I expect the people I am criticizing would respond by arguing that sports players are genuinely the best at what they do and that being fit and good at sports are good ends but the ‘overly’ skinny models are a distortion of physical beauty and encourage unhealthy behaviors like anorexia or extreme diets. At first blush the argument that trying to be fit/good at sports is healthy behavior but trying to be super skinny is unhealthy seems reasonable. On closer examination, though, it becomes apparent this is really an unfair apples to oranges comparison. Probably because these arguments condemning skinny models are fairly common in our culture we are primed to think in terms of excessive skinniness but not primed to think of excessive fitness/workout. Just as some people can get obsessed with being skinny and develop harmful obsessions so too can others become harmfully obsessed with being buff and in shape. In both cases few members of the idolized class (models/pro-sports players) have such extreme physical characteristics (skininness/buffness) that their mere presence in someone poses a threat to health (some girls really are naturally that skinny). Yet in both cases many of the exemplars (models/pro-sports players) have put their health at great risk (anorexia/steroids) to force their body beyond where their physique could healthily be pushed not to mention the other deleterious effects this sort of behavior can have, e.g., not getting scholarships because you spent all your time trying to get good enough to go pro. Where we compare apples to apples both ideals are useless aesthetic/social displays that some extremely small group of people have the right body types to healthily achieve during their youth but because of the great social rewards on the table some people cause themselves harm in an attempt to achieve/prolong this state.

Finally the ‘argument’ that more curvy women are actually the most beautiful/attractive but super skinny models in the media have distorted societal taste just isn’t an argument at all. This is just a complaint by someone who isn’t (or doesn’t think they are) close to the top of the good looks heap (or kissing up to such a person). Stamping your foot and insisting that you really do exhibit the ideal look despite a societal consensus otherwise (if such consensus doesn’t exist what is the harm?) makes about as much sense as insisting that your empty cup is filled with water because you are hungry. The existence of any truly objective notion of beauty is just irrelevant to the issue, all that matters is what people find appealing and attractive wherever those preferences may have come from. Unless you are making the ridiculous claim that somehow men actually dislike looking at/sleeping with/dating the supposedly ‘too skinny’ women but all engage in a conspiracy to pretend they like them the question of who is really better looking is irrelevant if it is meaningful at all. In fact if you were a curvy woman who believed that you were objectively better looking or that men were inherently predisposed to prefer your look but are corrupted by society it would be exceptionally shallow to demand that society recognize your superior looks and relegate those skinny girls to the even worse position of being both societally disfavored and objectively worse looking.

Of course I don’t think that fashion models are considered better looking than more curvy and better endowed women. This should be obvious to anyone who has compared the women in playboy or otherwise get naked as entertainment. Fashion models are not chosen to maximize their heterosexual appeal but instead are the best examples of a certain aesthetic sensibility. I suspect the height makes the clothes look more dramatic and the fact they aren’t the sexual ideal leaves the attention on the clothes rather than their breasts but the primary theory a google search turns up is that they appeal to gay fashion designers (not all ideas with high page rank are good ones). However, the fact that fashion models are skinner and less well endowed than the societal ideal actually decreases the harm the force of the criticism. Most girls who have issues with their body-image want to look like the playboy playmates not fashion models. If this wasn’t the case we would see lots of women getting their breasts reduced to A size not increased to C or D. If the fashion industry were to use slightly more curvy models it could only strengthen the message that you have to look like a playboy stereotype to be pretty. Moreover, as most girls realize that fashion models are not the sexual ideal any blow to self-confidence cause by their differing body type is going to be blunted in a way it would not be if models were slightly more curvy and hence closer to the societal ideal.

I’ve made a bunch of arguments here but set aside your prejudices and reflexive responses for a minute a think about the issue and you should see how ridiculous this argument about the media portraying women as too skinny really is. This isn’t to say that life doesn’t really suck in our society if you are significantly overweight, especially as a girl but someone is always going to be considered the sexual ideal and some people are always going to be at the bottom end of attractiveness in societies eyes. Life is always going to suck for these people no matter who they are and I see no reason to believe that changing which people are held up as fashion models will do anything to change this situation. Perhaps fattening up fashion models would slightly improve the situation of those women a bit larger than the sexual ideal but if so it would also make things worse for women who are skinnier than the ideal. While one’s own myopic perception always makes it hard to believe that someone could suffer from an overabundance of what you desire (no I’m not telling you what trait I feel this way about) there are many women who can’t attract the male gaze because they look too skinny and stick like.

Of course there does appear to be a cap on how much a woman’s attractiveness can suffer from being too skinny (shy of serious anorexia) while there is no such cap on being overweight. Really overweight girls seem to have it really bad and as with other psychological pains I’m appalled at the dismissive attitude that the medical community takes to the great mental pain the accompanying rejection brings about. However, people who are really fat in this sense simply aren’t going to see any benefit from a slightly more curvaceous choice of fashion model and they usually aren’t the ones making these claims either. Even if a change in models caused a small redistribution of sexual status down among the relatively thin girls I doubt it would trickle up to the really overweight and unfortunately the fact that people seem to feel real disgust at people who are sufficiently overweight makes me suspect that this reflects a genetic predisposition. Being sufficiently overweight brings with it many health problems as well as reduced physical ability so it seems quite plausible that there was an evolutionary selection for such a trait. Of course such an evolutionary appeal is just speculation but whatever the cause as a pragmatic matter it is about as realistic to hope that our society will start finding the truly obese sexually attractive as it is to think greed and selfishness will disappear and we will all live together in an anarchistic utopia. It is far more practical when it comes to the seriously overweight to simply explore medical fixes than changes in our attitudes. While we are waiting for the magic pill to make us all beautiful I just don’t think making models slightly more curvy would make people feel any better and the study I cited at the start of this post supports that position.