"Stop Making the Thin Girl Ugly"

My short little response to this, because I like (most of) this post. I've seen it from both sides; I was (am?) anorexic, and I am naturally thin. I have an incredibly hard time putting on weight, or even maintaining a healthy weight. I've never maintained a BMI of over 18 in my life for more than a few weeks (let me tell you how happy my treatment team was/is about that). Anything under 18.5 is considered officially "underweight" (and the cut-off for the not-very-successful model bans). I was always the "skinny girl" - at school, at gymnastics, in the family. I grew into this role. I became this role. I became anorexic. I became anorexia.

There's more than enough written on how damaging skinny models are to young girls, on how they set up unrealistic expectations for the female body. There's plenty of awareness around "no fat talk" and accepting "bigger" bodies etc. And I certainly have no problem with this, but it's important to remember the other end of the spectrum: "skinny talk" can be just as damaging. Call a girl fat too many times and she starts to hate her body; call a girl skinny/anorexic too many times and, shocker - she starts to hate her body.

Obviously, it's more complicated than that. A discussion on the ethics and mentality of using super-thin models is the topic for entire books, and I won't get into it. But on the topic of all model body sizes, Jenni Chiu put it perfectly:

Thin-ness isn't the enemy -- exclusivity is. Instead of banning one body type, we should instead be demanding all body types.

I know that the knee-jerk tendency is to put down one to uplift another and that often, the pendulum swings high toward both extremes before settling in the middle. But I would caution against this particular fight being one of those times.

Ceasing to use one type of model isn't the answer. Starting to use other types might be.

We all have bodies, and society demands that we all wear clothes. Life is hard enough without the added insecurities body judgement brings us. So please do everyone a favor, and stop judging peoples' health and personalities based on a glance.