ARC is....

focus on one imperfection and dismiss the whole person as unworthy.

ARC don't take it personally i mean no offense but to comment on just her slightly chubby thighs only without seeing her as a generally pretty woman is very typical of much of society....lots of people choose to focus on perceived flaws instead of trying to see the bigger picture(no pun intended). I find it a very sad state of affairs, that we are so shallow as human beings....

Honestly? The size-12 woman might be better off doing something else besides modeling. To try to be a supermodel, I think it's abundantly clear she'd have to do some extreme starving and maybe a smack habit.
But I think a plus-size modeling contract would be a fine place to start. If the people like her so much, she'll have a career.

Incidentally, just as counterpoint to the question of male models - I studied art for a number of years and that included life drawing (drawing nude models). This was in an area with a guild for life models, which had a large list of regular models who knew how to model well (keep still, etc.).
We drew all kinds of women, from skinny to petite to enormous. But all the men were about the same - relatively ideal. One guy had a piercing in a surprising place, one was a bit long-waisted, and one guy was in his 70s, but that's all the variation there was. They were all slender, muscular, and ideally proportioned. No skinny guys, no short guys, no fat guys.

Men who weren't already the ideal wouldn't even consider modeling. So apparently all this body image stuff affects them, too.

I just looked up that modeling guild - same story holds true today. The men are all in a very narrow height/weight range. The women range from 4'11''/92 lbs to 5'10''/130 lbs to 5'6''/170 lbs.

Finally. I was mostly posting to tweak some of you. Every time one of these "anorexic model" threads come up, a bunch of women decend on it like a pack of wolves, clucking their tongues about "how terrible that woman looks" and how "real men don't like women like that" and "real women have curves". Well, guess what - "real women" come in all different shapes and sizes and "real men" all have different opinions of what they find attractive.

I've seen all sorts of nasty comments about this girl and others like her on other threads. Name-calling and pointing out flaws and the like, which is the point I was trying to make by pointing out the flabby thighs on the one everyone deemed beautiful. I'm wondering what some of the people here would think if they stumbled on a website where everyone was talking about a 250 lb woman and saying "gross, look at those lumps sticking out everywhere" and "no REAL man would want that", etc? I would think that they would be justifiably upset.

The appropriate criticism goes to the industry that created this. That girl has to be that thin to work, unfortunately. That industry has created a world so far out of the realm of reality that it's pitiful. That girl has been sucked into that fantasy world and will pay for it with her health in the future. She needs to be pitied, not jumped all over.

I'm particularly sensitive to this because my wife is naturally small. She doesn't diet or try to lose weight. She just is where she is (about 5'1", 108 lbs - not anorexic or anything, just slender). She takes a huge amount of crap from heavier women where she has worked and even from her own family. She doesn't "have curves" but is most definitely a "real woman".

Sorry about the rant. I just get so tired of the reverse bashing that I see on this board.

You guys, arc is speaking for his own taste, and for what you typically see in models. Just because a guy admires a certain kind of thighs does not imply that he is shallow or dismisses the whole picture in real life.

Whoops, he posted while I was posting. Well, anyway.

So you would understand better those women who doomed to fight flab and cellulite for thier entire livfe and take a lot of crap from both slim women and men only because they have curves and/or celulite. I believe it goes both ways, but the trend is more and more towards "lean" and "muscular" look, which is hard to achieve for the majority of "real women" without starving and being gym rat.

Unless you are an ectomorph, as is most of my family is. Naturally muscular, my father, my mother, and immediate family were never a gym rats, and still maintained a muscular build without starving.

I figure you are only "doomed" if you desire too strongly to be like something that you're not. If you are a "pear" shaped, you'll never achieve the long slender body type.

http://www.weightlossforall.com/bod...weight-loss.htm

Arc has a point, its all just a matter of opinion. I do believe that girl is very thin, but I am not disgusted by it because its her choice. Its unfair to assume that this girl has XXX type of issues or to critisize, because as far as we know so does the plus sized model. Some men and woman like the look of thin, some like "curves" and some men like over weight woman more.
I am pretty confused as to what constitutes a "real woman" anyways? Yes, it is to each thier own.

Well, my point was that we all have our own struggles and looking down on others that are different is uncalled for, no matter which direction we are coming from.

I don't have to stumble into a website to hear comments about fat women being unattractive, I hear it to my face, or rather as a knife in the back from people who seem to think my fat butt muffles the sound of their voices.

Well, I hope she attains some sort of fame/success. I hate to admit this -- but I am rooting for her mostly because she represents girls like me...and I've felt pretty invisible all my life.

I am not a pear but hourglass with very little flab, despite being almost 50. never even dreamed of long slender body, this you have to be born with. So I am working on keeping flab at bay and would rather have bigger tighs as long as they are not jiggly. Consider that I am almost 50, I am doing quite well. As I said it is not what is your size and weight, it is how you look with and without clothes.

The stick-thin Marianne Berglund is certainly NOT attractive in the least. WAAAAYYYYYYY too skinny.

However, when I look at Jen Hunter, I think "cute girl, if she lost a couple of pounds she'd be hot". Size 12 is still pretty thick by any set of standards. It absolutely most definitely qualifies as "plus sized". I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's just not even close to lean.

LOTS of people go from being thick to being exceptionally lean. I'm not saying that everyone SHOULD do that, but if Ms. Hunter actually thinks she wants to be a "supermodel", girl needs to hit the gym. Half of getting what you want is knowing what you have to give up to get it. More crunches, less croissants.

With regard to the 'cult of thinness', I thought posters to this thread might be interested to read the following:

It was part of an email newsletter sent out by Caryn Franklin, who is the presenter of the Clothes Show in the UK, and has over 25 years experience in the fashion industry.

I agree with arc. It's pretty hypocritical to complain about the way society treats overweight people and then rip underweight people to shreds. I also find the comparison of skinny people to concentration camp victims abhorrent. Are we really so body-obsessed that it's ok to compare overly skinny models to victims of one of the worst atrocities of the last century?

I think it's a shame that the fashion industry perpetuates an impossible ideal, but whenever they've tried using bigger models it doesn't work. As Ayu mentioned, people like the fantasy. I think we can all agree that this "fantasy" image of skinniness has run to a ridiculous extreme, but that's no reason to pick on too-skinny models or make disgusting comparisons.

When have they tried to use larger models and why didn't it work?

Victoria's Secret uses larger models, and their catalogs are very well received. And their TV specials get good ratings.