What's wrong with being fat?

[Pedro_Bear]

[madhair60]

What's more, I'd have to put in some effort, which I'm loath to do.

Fix'd

[mini goatbix]

Oh, I've long accepted that looking good is impossible to achieve, products or not.

First stage. Once they've got you unsure about the way you look then it's quite easy to offer you a solution. Maybe that's the tag line they should be using
"Even you can be beautiful. We know how."
A few years of brainwashing and you'll be sobbing as you buy just one more moisturiser, in the hope that this one will, as promised, achieve the impossible. Don't let them get you too, Milo, run! Run for the hills!

There are some guys who can look at their flabby paunch, missing chin and flaking patchy skin and think "Yup, looking goooood!" I want to take their misplaced, delusional confidence and bottle it - by leaking that into the water supply I could, dare I say it, destroy the beauty industry.

[Zero Gravitas]

fat lips

FatLip - What's Up Fat Lip?

[Milo]

"Even you can be beautiful. We know how."
A few years of brainwashing and you'll be sobbing as you buy just one more moisturiser, in the hope that this one will, as promised, achieve the impossible. Don't let them get you too, Milo, run! Run for the hills!

They won't get me! Closest thing I do to looking after my appearance is gym use, and that is so heavily subsidised by work that it scarcely even counts as a product. Plus that's health as well as laziness through improved respiration. Everything else is just hygiene.

[hpmons]

The desire to look attractive is a vital part of femininity, those who don't participate are considered more androgynous/tomboyish.

[Danger Man]

There are some guys who can look at their flabby paunch, missing chin and flaking patchy skin and think "Yup, looking goooood!"

Hello.

It isn't just delusional levels of self-confidence that allow some men to get any woman they want, you know. Non-homeopathic amounts of money are required as well.

[Talulah, really!]

First stage. Once they've got you unsure about the way you look then it's quite easy to offer you a solution. Maybe that's the tag line they should be using

A few years of brainwashing ......

They?.....You mean the whole Beauty industry is nothing more than a Giant AVONzi Scheme?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Fix'd

I'd have to become a woman, for starters. There's still quite a few people, places and things I'd like to put my penis in before then, if you don't mind.

[confettiinmyhair]

In answer to your original question Ronnie. My worry is that the media are creating a polarising attitiude to 'fat'. On one side you have programmes such as ' The Biggest Loser' which rewards weight loss, and places a great importance on discovering the thinner 'you'. On the other you have Gok Wan-style programmes which promote this "it don't matter what you look like, what matters is what's inside" attitude. This must cause great confusion.

In a time where men are confronted with sharply defined Men's Health Front Cover models and Giant Calvin Klein bilboards and women's magazines are talking about the latest celeb diet fad, and how you can fit into that bikini when you go to Corfu in a months time - it seems that we are attempting to buy into a body fantasy, which individually we are never likely to attain.

I blame mixed messages. In the olden days, we were physically defined by our societal roles. So labourers would be beefcakes, dairy maids robust and the idle rich were plump and rotund. Nowadays we strive to look unnatural.

[Talulah, really!]

Non-homeopathic amounts of money are required as well.

It's a myth peddled by frustrated socio-biologists that woman subconsciously think of money when seeking a mate, we're not that $hallow.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The desire to look attractive is a vital part of femininity, those who don't participate are considered more androgynous/tomboyish.

Long flowing locks and a copse of fanny hair is androgynous/tomboyish?

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

That's the hippy aesthetic.  I remember reading an article in a magazine (having now forgotten which one) about how feminists can be girly and sexy.  Gone is the idea of the "butch dyke"!  Let's make feminism sexy! Men can wank off while women say intelligent things!  I was a bit annoyed at myself for reading it and looking at the pretty lady in her short dress and thinking, "Oh, fuck you for trying to make it socially acceptable to be an open feminist".  It was my own bullshit; what she was saying, and believes, is more important that what she looks like.  I'm as short sighted as anybody.

I don't think feminism and being overly feminine are mutually exclusive, by the way.  It's a preference in dressing, they're both statements in their own way; one challenging the notions of what being a woman is, the other challenging the notions of what feminism looks like. The point, I guess, is that that it shouldn't matter what people look like anyway.  But the former, "butch dyke" feminists still illicit short shrift from a lot of women.  They don't want to be a feminist if that's what feminism looks like.

[advice_dog]

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

[advice_dog]

[rudi]

Oh good, he's opened his other sign on. Well there you go, debaters: have more accounts; it's what Bertrand Russell would have done...

[advice_dog]

[Johnny Yesno]

To be fair, the argument predates Kelvin McKenzie, "The public gets what the public wants" Paul Weller, Going Underground 1980.

The lyrics actually go "the public wants what the public gets". See what he did, there?

[Milo]

It goes both ways in the song in different verses.

[Johnny Yesno]

It goes both ways in the song in different verses.

Good point. The vacillating shillyshallyer.

[SweetRosalyn]

I know this thread's a bit old now, but I came across this today and it reminded me of this thread:



And as a bit of help in the 'that's not obese, that's just cuddly' side of the discussion, the four women on the right are all obese:



I'd say the women in the top poster is probably about equivalent to the one second from the right? 

[Guy]

I would.

[Danger Man]

Here's the answer Ronnie.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8538496.stm

Despite fewer visits to gyms and a love of high-fat foods, people in the 1960s were slimmer simply because they were more active, the government says.

Rates of obesity in English adults have risen from 1-2% in the 1960s to around 26% today, figures show.

Yet in 2010, overweight adults are far less likely to try to lose weight, a repeat of a survey done in 1967 showed.

Plus adults in the 1960s did more housework and used the car less, the Department of Health said.

The 1967 survey of 1,900 adults found nine in ten people had attempted to lose weight in the past year compared with 57% of 1,500 adults questioned in 2010.

Forty years ago, only 7% of those who considered themselves to be overweight had failed to do anything about it compared with 43% of today's adults.

And in 1967, 66% of those surveyed said they wanted to lose up to a stone compared with 46% in 2010.

[advice_dog]