So, while body-image is important for both men and women, I think it's a much larger psychological issue for most women (there's an interesting article in the NYT on how subordinate monkeys eat fatty treats and feel better, but when subordinate female office workers eat fatty treats, they briefly feel better and then feel guilty.) So in that context I (and a large number of feminist scholars) see it as a feminist issue -because it's a way in which women tend to dis themselves/be dissed by others.
On a related note, anyone else notice a massive increase in catcalling since the weather got better? I swear, guys, when you're hooting at a 30-year-old plumpish mom walking her dog...(yes, I was wearing a low-ish cut shirt, because CP and i were going out to dinner, but...)
I wonder what the right range is for supporting reproduction, actually?
Mostly, my point was that this Flickr site provided a way for me to see a disjunction between BMI and my own concepts of attractive body image; jdw and contrariety and others are totally correct that the next step is not "Aha,BMI is wrong; I will eat as much ice cream as I want!" but rather "BMI is about health, roughly, and that's different from average attractiveness, esp. as BMI normal /= average (which turns out to be size 14 for U.S. women)."
There's also an interesting separate issue here, which is that doctors are explicitly valuing length of life over all other considerations. (I know that extremely low-calorie diets are said to extend life, for instance.) Personally, I'd be happy to sacrifice, say, the years 87-90 in return for 8 decades of occasional really yummy food cooked in lots of butter.
no subject
On a related note, anyone else notice a massive increase in catcalling since the weather got better? I swear, guys, when you're hooting at a 30-year-old plumpish mom walking her dog...(yes, I was wearing a low-ish cut shirt, because CP and i were going out to dinner, but...)
I wonder what the right range is for supporting reproduction, actually?
Mostly, my point was that this Flickr site provided a way for me to see a disjunction between BMI and my own concepts of attractive body image; jdw and contrariety and others are totally correct that the next step is not "Aha,BMI is wrong; I will eat as much ice cream as I want!" but rather "BMI is about health, roughly, and that's different from average attractiveness, esp. as BMI normal /= average (which turns out to be size 14 for U.S. women)."
There's also an interesting separate issue here, which is that doctors are explicitly valuing length of life over all other considerations. (I know that extremely low-calorie diets are said to extend life, for instance.) Personally, I'd be happy to sacrifice, say, the years 87-90 in return for 8 decades of occasional really yummy food cooked in lots of butter.