I discussed in my previous post the concept of outer beauty, and the need for non-model females to appreciate the unique traits which make us beautiful. I mentioned that growing up, there were some fairly uniform female standards of beauty, most of who were white, blonde, and symmetrical. Thankfully we became wise enough to recognize that this was a silly standard, and the ground-breakers like Beverly Johnson, and Lauren Hutton, and Cindy Crawford (with mole) opened our eyes to that fact.
Now, we appreciate and laud the outer beauty of "flawed" character traits. Moles and gapped teeth are not hidden, big ears are left out in all their glory, resembling the opposite sex is titillating, and looking drug-emaciatedly thin are all celebrated looks. Skin color and ethnic background are moot. Everyone is beautiful.
Wellll. Not quite everyone. Fat people are never beautiful.
Now of course, I do not believe this, in the least. But I am pretty sure that 87.6% of the population do.
I am going to come across as slightly contradictory (and maybe even catty) in this post, because, while I celebrate that we have become people who appreciate and applaud unique traits (previously, "flaws"), the thing is, if a person is "fat," those same unique traits are once again relegated to the "flaws" category.
Actresses and models who we consider "beautiful" or "cute" would not be described as such (hell, they likely wouldn't be actresses or models, at all) if they were 80-100 pounds bigger. Add 100 pounds to Ginnifer Goodwin, and her sticky out ears and cute pixie haircut would not be so cute, after all. Same beautiful face, same great sense of style, but on a fat body, she's no starlet on a red carpet. She may be talented and good hearted, but if she's also "fat" (and I'll go into that, in a bit), it provokes a sad shaking of the head and a commentary of "hmmm... too bad." Like it or not, skinny females can get away with a whole lot more. I dare you to take any female star with "unique" looks and add 50 pounds to the frame. Five bucks says they never would have made it through the lobby of a casting call.
Now I'm going to briefly touch upon the idea of what is considered "fat." There doesn't seem to be a magical number in pounds or dress size which is the watermark for crossing over into fat territory. I think that many women might consider anything over size 12 to be dangerous, and that many men refer to anyone over 115 pounds as "at least 200 pounds." Neither of these are fat, unless you happen to be like, 2 foot 2 and the age of 4.
Thankfully, we have come along a bit in our considerations of "big" beauty (the Dove campaign, for one- which of course had some backlash), but there is still a long way to go. There are some big beautiful female stars out there who break the mold, but the negative Catherine observes that, when one of them loses a ton of weight, suddenly they are reeeeaaaalllly beautiful.
I'm not going to go into a big dissertation here about what is healthy, or about the obesity factor in Americans in particular. And of course, we prefer to look at people who we consider attractive, and generally that does not include people with waist tires and triple chins. However, just like with the hairy mole covered guy, we need to recognize that everyone truly is beautiful, regardless of initial impressions. I'm not talking about "on the inside" or "having a great sense of humor" (which is generally how fat people are described), I'm talking about what is right in front of our eyes.
I'm not even going to rail on about the fact that Outer Beauty is generally crap, and it's the Inner Beauty which makes us truly beautiful. Maybe I'll reserve a separate post for that. I will say, though, from atop the luxury penthouse suite of my soapbox, that we need to get beyond the first glance. I DO understand Hollywood standards, and I'm not saying that they should be employing all chubby actresses, or that people shouldn't try to lose weight. I am saying, though, that if "flawed" can be beautiful on skinny women, it can be beautiful on the non-skinny ones, as well. Fat can be beautiful, too. It's a fact.
Now I'm going to briefly touch upon the idea of what is considered "fat." There doesn't seem to be a magical number in pounds or dress size which is the watermark for crossing over into fat territory. I think that many women might consider anything over size 12 to be dangerous, and that many men refer to anyone over 115 pounds as "at least 200 pounds." Neither of these are fat, unless you happen to be like, 2 foot 2 and the age of 4.
Thankfully, we have come along a bit in our considerations of "big" beauty (the Dove campaign, for one- which of course had some backlash), but there is still a long way to go. There are some big beautiful female stars out there who break the mold, but the negative Catherine observes that, when one of them loses a ton of weight, suddenly they are reeeeaaaalllly beautiful.
I'm not going to go into a big dissertation here about what is healthy, or about the obesity factor in Americans in particular. And of course, we prefer to look at people who we consider attractive, and generally that does not include people with waist tires and triple chins. However, just like with the hairy mole covered guy, we need to recognize that everyone truly is beautiful, regardless of initial impressions. I'm not talking about "on the inside" or "having a great sense of humor" (which is generally how fat people are described), I'm talking about what is right in front of our eyes.
I'm not even going to rail on about the fact that Outer Beauty is generally crap, and it's the Inner Beauty which makes us truly beautiful. Maybe I'll reserve a separate post for that. I will say, though, from atop the luxury penthouse suite of my soapbox, that we need to get beyond the first glance. I DO understand Hollywood standards, and I'm not saying that they should be employing all chubby actresses, or that people shouldn't try to lose weight. I am saying, though, that if "flawed" can be beautiful on skinny women, it can be beautiful on the non-skinny ones, as well. Fat can be beautiful, too. It's a fact.
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