Here’s the answer to the Who’s the Fatty? game (this time I left the answer on the lower right corner of the picture instead of cropping it out):
Can you believe it? I cannot. I looked and looked and LOOKED at that photo, and couldn’t even GUESS who might be the plus-size model. Not one of those girls has a forearm wider than her…”hindarm”? “Upper arm,” I guess.
This is the sort of thing that makes me want to go break a few necks, you know? Or hindarms.
Here’s something that keeps that mood going: Illustrated BMI Categories, by Shapely Prose. It’s mesmerizing and and nauseating to see what doctors call “morbidly obese,” “obese,” “overweight,” “normal,” and “underweight.”
I don’t know whether to feel super depressed after that BMI slideshow, or to feel better because it’s all obviously some sick joke. They can’t be serious…
I am officially in love with Shapely Prose. Thanks for linking to her site.
I’m sick to my (very large) stomach over the labeling of that girl as plus sized. If that’s what plus sized looks like, what the hell am I? Ginormous sized?
That BMI illustrator also made me sad. Why hasn’t the BMI calculator been revised? Are doctors advising patient based on these archaic and ridiculous numbers? No wonder we have such a screwed up collective body image in this country. Times like this make me sad that I had a girl. I don’t want her to have to deal with all this shit.
Wow. No wonder we’re all messed up…
yeah i was obese, then i went on my diet and lost 25 pounds and was still considered very over weight and i was only 160 it drives me damn insane.
Also, every time I hear your name Swistle it makes me want some hot cocoa…you know swiss miss. I’m strange, I just need to have some and get over it huh!
The BMI illustrator answered a burning question for me. I have done a lot of research on health statistics recently, and what it says is that 66% of Americans are overweight or obese. And I was wondering to myself about that, because when I look around, 2/3 of people don’t look to me to be overweight or obese. So I was wondering where they were all hiding. And now I know, it’s not that they’re hiding, it’s that they look perfectly healthy to me.
Wow, that is sad. I just can’t imagine what kind of screwed up thing makes that girl a plus-sized model.
That slide show was interesting…and sad also. I say screw all the indicators, let’s learn to love ourselves by feeling healthy.
Weight is such a difficult issue.
The models are all skinny as far as I can tell, and to my eyes, I’d say underweight would apply.
The fashion industry glorifying such figures while the real people of the country are all carrying more weight than is even healthy for them, is pretty horrifying.
The thing we need to separate is the connection between beauty and being thin.
The eating / exercising problems of our country are another issue altogether, that’s hard enough to talk about without starting to insult people’s intrinsic attractiveness and self worth!
Well, you have made feel better, because when I recently calculated my own BMI, I nearly sh*t my pants. I’m glad SOMEONE is raging against the machine!
And that girl? That tiny, nearly starved to death girl? She is NOT plus-sized.
Yeah… she’s fat alright. On the show, Mr Jay was saying that she’s between regular and plus size… “real size”. I would love to know what her actual weight/height is, because she still looks on the thin side to me. Also, these girls are young, pre-baby shape, so I would expect them to be a little smaller and a lot more firm than me.
i don’t get how the bmi calcultion machine got so screwed up. people have mentioned they’re using “archaic” numbers… but i had some (i guess erroneous) rosy-tinted view of the past where “skinny” was a much more healthy size than it is today. is that fake? were we promoting 110 lb 5’8″ girls as the ideal in 1955 too?
I couldn’t finish the slideshow. It sucked. It’s no wonder so many women take anti-depressants these days. With all the CRAP we put up with, it just comes at you from all directions.
And I was flipping throught the stations the other night and landed on Dancing with the Stars. I remember one of the instructors commenting on how his dance partner -a SI swimsuit model- was “deceptively unfit.” Skinny does not equate to healthy. BMI can kiss it.
Sick. And, wrong.
I think you’re all looking at this wrong – i’ve decided what this means is that I actually look like her. I thought that I looked big but apparently my eyes have just been playing tricks on me!!! so plus sized looks pretty darn good right? especially when you’re air brushed
This shit is so infuriating!
Geez.
Nowheymama- I ALREADY ASKED Shapely Prose’s Kate Harding to marry ME, so TOO LATE FOR YOU IF YOU’RE THINKING OF IT. (Erica, I hope you don’t mind if Kate marries me too. She’s AWESOME.)
Bananafana- HA HA! Yes.
I can’t go there. Fear of “morbidly obese.”
I love bananafanna’s outlook. I am a supa-star!
Wow, I totally thought it was the bottom right since it looked like she had a bit of a “tummy”. I need to watch the show way closer. I work with a little Asian Doctor that once wrote “obese” on a testing order for a 135lb woman. I hate to know how he feels about my badunk-a-dunk.
Oh my gosh, I spit out my chocolate ice cream sundae reading these comments….too funny.
hahaha, hindarm. Is that anything like a crelbow?
Oh. My. God. SHE IS NOT a plus-size model! Jesus. Now that I’ve seen this, I feel the need to eat a twinkie and congratulate myself on being normal, because if she is more than a SIZE SIX I will eat my boot.
I calculated mine and it says I’m overweight. Too bad, because lately I feel pretty Attractive, and even posted those honeymoon bikini photos, so I don’t know. I don’t feel overweight. I hate all this stuff. It’s so stupid.
UGH.
Hi Swistle, this is a great post. I am an Enrolled Endorsed Nurse here in Australia and I find the BMI to be sickeningly unrealistic on so very many levels.
I have a friend whom is pregnant with her first child. She was told her BMI places her in the overweight-just-under-obese category. Unbelievable. She is curvy, yes, but when the fuck did curves make us automatically fat in themselves? Her curves are GORGEOUS. She is healthy, radiant, can walk and run for kilometres on end, eats great food, is full of enthusiasm & life … yet the black and white numbers that do not recognise her WHOLE SELF in the contexts they should say she is severely overweight and risking obesity? WTF? Thankfully, she has enough sense & esteem in her own health & energy & self to scoff at the BMI for the narrow & ridiculous measurement that it is, but oh, the hundreds of people, particularly young girls, that have the potential to be fucked up by it is truly dreadful.
Also, my husband is 6 foot, 7 inches – hugely healthy, scuba dives, hikes, is slim-medium build in appearance with good muscle tone & good energy and strength, healthy overall. The BMI? You guessed it! He’s “obese”, too! Needs to lose about 15kg (or 35 odd pounds) to fit into the edge of what the BMI calls healthy. Thankfully, he, too, sees the BMI for what it is and pays it no heed.
I have weight to lose, but I certainly won’t ever use the BMI as a context for what weight I should be – my own levels of energy and ability and comfort will tell me that in themselves.
Sorry this is so long! You’ve struck a chord with many of us :).
they hid the plus size (please) ladies’ belly behind one of the AVERAGE size model. scary. the world is scary. i have 2 girls and i am terrified of how they will handle body image.
You know what really makes angry about that whole labeling thing? How can they call a woman PLUS-sized who is at least four sizes smaller than the average American female? (If we are speaking in American terms of course, and since Top Model is an American show, I’d say it qualifies). We worry so much about obesity, yet reward women handsomely when they survive on cigarettes and/or drugs, forgetting about food in the process.
I’ll stop now, this soapbox is getting a little slippery.
I hate myself for living that show. I really do. The unrealistic expectation that society places on women is disgusting. I just read in a People magazine about how an actress had “slimmed herself down from a size 6 to a 4″… I am sure she was a horse before that happened.
BMI is a load of crap that doesn’t take things like frame size into account at all. I look downright unhealthy I am so thin right now (nursing makes me scrawny, apparently) but I am “healthy” according to BMI calculators. Last time I was this weight I had a doctor tell me I should gain ten pounds. BMI is overloaded towards WAY too thin.
Hmm. That was an interesting slideshow. I’m not exactly “outraged” by the pictures, but some of them were surprising – the grades into categories “overweight” and “obese” seem off to me.
I love how unmerciful the categorization was to those that appear to have those mommy hips and pooch. Sigh.
Four years later, reading through archives.. and I have Strong Opinions about this, which even four years late are demanding to be shared. I’m 22, in halfway-decent shape, have gained maybe 20 pounds since the beginning of high school eight years ago. I’d attribute most of that weight gain to the birth control & antidepressants. So what does my doctor tell me? Not to gain any more weight, or I’ll be overweight. (Ha! I don’t think so.)
Given the total lack of recognition that oh, right, the new medications might have contributed to that — I am just about ready to switch doctors and rant at the next person who tells me I’m overweight.
(Would I love to drop the 20 pounds? Sure, but short of going off the meds, I’m not sure that one will happen any time soon.)