Yes.

However, the question remains: is society's obsession with thinness so deeply ingrained at this point that digital manipulation or not, women will continue to torture themselves?

In a word, yes.

I think it will take a few hundred years for the pendulum to swing, if it does.

It will never happen ....NEVER!!!

I was going to say, man, not only did she lose 15 pounds, she's apparently lost five or six years and her extensions.

no way. remember when models/celebs were thin, yet still looked healthy?? like cindy crawford? julia roberts in pretty woman?
then came the whole "heroin chic" thing, and kate moss and the like were everywhere, and all of a sudden everyone went from a size 4 to a size 0. i think if there was more reality shown in mags/ads, people would begin to embrace a healtier outlook on image.

Time travel is my preferred weight-loss method too!

yes, i find it so frustrating that magazines constantly feel the need to airbrush me. i'm naturally gorgeous, dammit!!!

@Titania: i know! why do we obssess over losing a few pounds when the real trick is lose a few years! genius!

Yep I was right...old stock photo.

having just finished my dissertation on anorexia in the 19th century, i'm pretty sure women have always starved themselves, pretty much since the medieval nuns did that shit way back when.

not sure why entirely. probably that pesky 'patriarchy' thing.

@jenalicious: I think "reality" is dichotomized into uber-thin and uber-curvy these days. Healthy means.....who the hell knows, in the magazine world. I feel like as more unrealistic body types are embraced, there's actually MORE discussion about health and body image.

@Rummy_McGin: Yes but these women in the 19th century were from what social class? Race?

Let me guess. Lots of time with a personal trainer and celery for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's not hard to figure out, OK dumbfucks.

What do you think that miracle food is? Cause it ISN'T from Starbucks.

And having said that, I want a gravity defying ass. Now.

@badmutha: Exlax and redbull.

definitely yes, women'll continue

@Rummy_McGin: Also, man am I jealous. I am dying to go back to grad school.

@badmutha: I'll buy you an Eraser Tool for your birthday. CS3, of course.

@Archetype: Or, to grad school period. I've never been.

As pointed out above, it's not just the thinness -- it's the airbrushing. Time or Newsweek or whoever was justly pilloried for darkening O.J.'s face on their cover. Racism is going to exist whether or not some newsweekly dishonestly alters photos, but calling them out on it was still a no-brainer. It's about time that fashion magazines get the same censure for their photo manipulation.

@Rummy_McGin: um, that sounds super interesting. what's your degree in? public health/history/something else?

@Rummy_McGin: I've always been really interested in that--because it seems like women have ALWAYS been depicted with skinny as the "ideal", unless you go way the hell back to like, Titian. Or Rubens. And that's like 1500/1600s.

What really IS a healthy weight? Obviously there's a disconnect between the reality and the ideal. And the BMI ain't helping anyone.

@badmutha: I want to start a band with the name "Gravity Defying Ass".

Women will always want to be thin. I just hope we can still pull back out of the size 0 fixation. Any smaller and the only famous people will be infants (at a thin 6 pounds, 2 oz.). Or dead.

@Rummy_McGin: I'm sure that is part of the reason, but being inundated with (unrealistic) photos/movies/tv of really thin women and girls certainly contributed to me having one.

I think about Ally McBeal. I never watched that show, but watching those women try to "out-thin" each other was disturbing. I saw LFB in something recently and didn't recognize her b/c she looked sort of normal.

@Rummy_McGin: I'd be interested in reading that dissertation.

i can has photoshop?

I think I'm going to start posting pics of me from 6 years ago everywhere so people will think its me. Of course, I'll have to become a recluse so they won't catch on...hmm. Must.think.through.

Seriously, I want to be able to eat a balanced, fun diet without feeling like a failure at life.

I'd also like to be able to buy pants that fit.

Neither seems possible in this lifetime.

@eleanorstrousers: Not so, says I. It depends on the culture and the scarcity of resources. Some cultures prize a fuller figure because it indicates wealth (ie you got so much money to buy food that you get fat). Women all over the world throughout time didn't always wnat to be skinny.

@NefariousNewt: I love making up names for my non-existent band. Tell you what, y'all can open up for my band, "Uniform Simultaneous Death Act." That's actually, like, the name of an act.

I really want to lose three pounds.

@Rummy_McGin: So cool! I'd love to read your dissertation. As someone who also studied "anorexia" in medieval nuns when in college (I put it in quotes b/c I'm not sure it's an appropriate term for that historical context) it was more about a signifigance around food, ritual and asceticism but not so much around body image. Our obsession with starving ourselves is a whole different beast. When did that start?

@Sophie: This is true. Heft signified wealth, not only for men but for women as well. Anorexia among women in the 18/19 centuries likely had more to do with grasping at some control and less to do with societal pressure.

But, I would be interested in what Rummy_McGin has to say about it.

i think it's annoying how magazines say celebs look "normal" when they gain weight. like when lindsay lohan was super scary skinny and then she gained some more weight, magazines were all "lindsay's back to a normal size" wtf? lindsay lohan, even with her weight gain, is still wayyyyy smaller than the average american woman.

I've never actually had any girl friends who look at those pictures of size 00s and say man, I want to look like that. And I've never had guy friends who looked at them and said, damn, I would hit that. The only reaction I've heard to those pictures is ewww, gross, and, I wouldn't fuck that, she might break. So I don't understand why magazines keep showing us these people, except for the gross factor.

@haguenite (misses Elizabeth): I want to lose 5, so there.

I totally read that as "Carbs On Fake Photos" and expected to see, I don't know, photoshoped pictures of donuts and pasta.

@jenalicious: Yeah. I was just reading the novel "Model Behavior" by Jay McInerney and he talks about buying his model girlfriend a size 6 when she insists she's a 4. I was like, "that is so 90s!"

@jenalicious: i was watching bits of mystic pizza last night and noted how much better julia roberts did when she looked normal and wasn't such a beanpole.

@eleanorstrousers: i wonder about that. what if in the united states - overnight - put larger women on the covers of magazines and in commercials and on television shows? what if you couldn't find a slim woman depicted anywhere? would that change things? what if men were taught to be attracted to women of all sizes, not just size 8 and under? what if all sizes for women were available in ALL stores?

even as i type this, i realize how the cards are not stacked in the favor of the overweight or even the slightly chunky, and how acceptance of people of all sizes is a herculean task.

@tscheese: ha... BMI is ridiculous if you only use height to weight ratio. My boyfriend is 5'10" and about 225, and solid muscle. not overweight in the least.. his BMI, however puts him at morbidly obese.

Shucks! OK magazine caught on to what I have been doing for years. The older the picture, the cuter I look. Using my pre-school school pics has gotten me far in life.

@Sophie: True, but what was desirable was always nearly impossible to attain for women of average means. No matter what the ideal body type will be painfully out of reach forever.

@dictator4life1: I can say that a lot of issues I've had around eating have come from a place where I just want to disappear (physically/mentally/spiritually) and actually repel people, especially men.

Yes. Whatever a culture considers "hot" is whatever is associated with wealth and status. Way back in the day when wealthy people were the ones who had the most access to food and didn't have to work out of doors, curvy and pale was the most desired look. These days, the wealthy are the ones with the luxury of choosing what to eat and the time to exercise/focus entirely on their own bodies, so being thin and tanned is considered desirable.

@Archetype: Oh my god what are you talking about you're so skinny!

@Augusta: Or a picture of a donut sitting on a picture of Britney?

@rednrowdy: i know! and the scene in Pretty Woman when she's buying clothes and the saleslady looks at her and goes, "size 6" and she's like, how did you know that?

that line makes me nostolgic for better days!!

@tell Dolly Parton again: Exactly. Maybe we could have a rule that wherever they photoshop out some person's actual flesh they have to photoshop in a donut.

@LBB is tired: Totally. I've always been fascinated by the tanning thing.

I wonder if there are two (or more) kinds of eating disorders: those stemmed from wanting to achieve some ideal and those stemmed from an all-around feeling of powerlessness?

I mean, prob both have elements of powerlessness, but I wonder if people from group A, (impossible ideal-chasers)would go find some other way to express their sickness, if size zero weren't the societal idea of beauty?

I don't have an eating disorder, but I can tell you that how fat I feel goes up and down depending on how skinny the people I see are. But I'm normal... not sick. Sick people might feel rotten no matter what.
@Rummy_McGin (and everyone else): Any thoughts?