Skinny Get Skinnier on Reality TV!!

Now is it just me..or is there something fundamentally wrong with this latest reality tv concept??

THUMBS DOWN:

New documentary aims to expose risks of crash dieting....

LONDON A British television station plans to screen a documentary featuring women who volunteer to slim to ultrathin sizes to expose the health dangers of excessive dieting, it said on Thursday. Duh..like we don’t know the dangers of starvation diets???

Britain's Channel 4 will show "Super-Skinny Me: The Race to Size Zero" early next year, as a group of female journalists film their attempts to drop to a size 2, equivalent to a U.S. size 00. Saaaay What???? Why??

"This documentary will highlight the dangers of aiming for a super-skinny look, and expose the serious health risks of extreme weight-loss methods, all of which are already in the public domain," said a Channel 4 spokesman. OK..so it’s a ‘’How-To For-Aspiring Anorexics…ok…I get it!

"At every stage of filming there will be continuous full medical support and expert guidance at hand." Well, that reassuring…NOT!

The channel said it hoped the findings would provoke the same type of debate as Morgan Spurlock's documentary film "Super Size Me," which showed the health effects of a month long binge on fast food. ...Um, isn’t there enough debate without starving a few more women to show what we already know?

Two recent British studies found the average woman in Britain is a British dress size 14, equivalent to a U.S. size 10. And this is good, right?

"The documentary will also look at how the super-skinny American fad is spreading to the U.K. and question whether it is spawning an extreme, collective eating disorder," Channel 4 said in a statement. Ok and they propose to do that how?? Oh yeah, that’s right, by showing women how to starve on reality tv.

Britain's last national size survey, taken in 2002, found that British women had gained weight and changed proportion since a first census was conducted in the 1950s. Research conducted last month by polling company Mintel, which interviewed 1,000 women, found the average woman in Britain was a British dress size 14. The study had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

It backed up findings from a study by British retailer Marks and Spencer, which also found female customers were an average dress size 14. They report this as though it is a problem...

Britain's Eating Disorder Association said it had worries about the potential health effects on those taking part in the documentary. Ya think???

"It could be very difficult to eat normally again after this experiment is over," said spokesman Steve Bloomfield. Well, new information...whoo hoo..like we didn't already know this...so let's just establish it on national tv??

The Associated Press Published: September 28, 2006

THUMBS UP:

SPAIN BANS SUPER-BONY CATWALK MODELS

It was pretty hard to miss this model's ribcage -- even amid all the blinding Pucci and Gucci prints.

Spain's decision to keep super-bony supermodels off the catwalk has been widely covered. But let's face it-- banning skeletal runway models won't really have much effect. The truth is that most young women see images of disgustingly skinny celebrities and models everywhere-- on billboards, in movies, in magazines and on television. And I don't think we should be passing legislation that mandates a minimum body weight for any woman who appears in the media.

Symbolically, though, I do like the fact that the Spanish government has publicly recognized that it's destructive to hold up this body type as an ideal. Now if only magazine editors and casting directors would agree, we might actually get somewhere.

Barbie Girl by Aqua

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*claps for Spain* of course, i also caught a blurb on-line about certain college-age students in Spain enacting a retro-movement to revive the ideals of the 50's: castity, modesty, etc. um...not too sure i could handle the chastity part...

Sunday October 15, 2006 - 02:56pm (CDT) Remove Comment

* Scare…
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I too saw red when I saw that this show was going to air. How altruistic of a commercial network to make a massive ratings grab by showing a TV show that is wrong on so many levels that EVERYBODY is going to talk about it and EVERYBODY will watch it for the gawk factor.

As a father of young girls, I worry about the imagery that they see already, without this poor excuse for programming adding to it. It appalls me that all the music video clips they see on TV, and all the kids shows they watch feature skinny skinny girls. I don't want thse people being my girls' role models. Also, shows like Americas Top Model (and the Australian equivilent) where only the skinny skinny girls get on. I ask you: how can anyone see beauty in that?

Give me a girl with lots of womanly curves and I will show you a beautiful woman. Don't show my kids some emaciated waif with her bones sticking out and who can barely stand due to massively low blood-sugar and call that beauty.

Oh, and the Milan Fasion Show this year also banned skinny girls from taking part.

Monday October 16, 2006 - 09:24am (EST) Remove Comment