We have reached yet another milestone as a community, one that was critical to our development. A desi of Indian origin has seized the coveted Miss Great Britain title!
With so few beauty pageant titles left unclaimed by the rising tide of brown in swimwear and heels, it was very important that we capture each of the remaining tiaras:
British-born Preeti Desai has become the first person of Indian origin to win the Miss Great Britain title replacing original winner Danielle Lloyd after she was stripped off the award for reportedly dating Judge Teddy Sheringham and agreeing to pose for Playboy magazine. [Link]
As with many winners, she has a heart-warming story behind her victory, one of filial piety:
Preeti gave all credit to her mum, who is recovering, from a serious illness. “When she was crowned Miss Great Britain she rang to tell me and said, ‘The crown is for you.’ I burst into tears. I felt as if I won that crown. I felt as if I am Miss Great Britain. She only wants to see me happy – both my girls do. They want to see me smiling thanks to them I was able to overcome that dreadful illness,” Hema said. [Link]
Like all good desi children, Preeti is multi-talented and ambitious. She worked for years in hair and beauty, before making a career switch to the family fireworks business and she may now be trying to get into property investment. In what I think are her own words:
She then started, and is currently working for the family business G2 Fireworks full time and was made Jr partner, which she built up after years of working for G2 Fireworks from being a child… Recently she decided to move to London and work as a model until she raised enough money to eventually get into the property business. [Link]
If you’re a fan, you can read her myspace page and personal website.
Abhi, you are getting a BIG eye-roll from the Bay Area.
I know that I am not the target reader for FHM or whatnot, I am addressing Jai Singh’s argument that curvy women exist in men’s magazines.
Do you really believe this? I’m not saying that to be catty, but this is just untrue. Also, out of curiosity, what is your evolutionary explanation for why women would prefer to waify female body types to “healthy” female body types?
I just meant that the guju’s finally get a beauty queen! :)
Ok, so she may not be a gujju, But Persis Khambatta who was Ms World is a Parsi and she must be speaking gujarati. Arent all Parsis also gujaratis, since they first landed off on the Kacch coast? Technically, she would be the first gujarati beauty queen.
You must be very important. You must have many leather-bound books and your apartment probably smells of rich mahogany.
I’m just important enough to ban your ass from using this site if you want to be an asshole.
Ladies, take heart.
A recent study has shown (I wish I had the inclination to dig it up and post the link) that increasingly, MEN are also suffering from body image issues and low self esteem from seeing well sculpted bodies and the image of good looking hairless bods in mass media. This has resulted in depression and serious questioning of one’s worth. Poor men 🙁
Such men are faced with 3 choices –
But they suually go for the 4th – 4. Continue to pine for those supermodels wondering why they can’t see your inner beauty
I don’t think it’s entirely “market driven”. There’s a feedback mechanism to some extent but it’s apparent that women have been presented with an ideal that keeps getting skinnier and skinnier. I don’t think they’re consuming the “need to be skinny because that is their ideal” but instead are consuming the “need to match an ideal according to whatever they’ve been told the ideal is”…
Hi folks, it’s late here and I don’t have much brainpower to contribute to this just now, but I just want to say: Right on, Camille!
That’s because such women push men’s hard-wired buttons as per Abhi’s comments regarding perceived fertility, biological fitness for bearing children etc.
As far as I know, this is a relatively recent cultural development specific to the West. Evolution has got nothing to do with it. However, someone like JoaT who actually works within the fashion industry would be a better person to explain exactly why there is currently such a strong preference for excessively skinny models in her line of work.
It’s similar to the phenomenon of “metrosexuality” with men.
Abhi channeling Ross Geller 🙂
If evolution has nothing to do with it, then I think it makes no sense to say “Oh, men like curvy women because of their reproductive capacity – as defined by evolution, but women like skinny women because they have a sense of self-hatred that they self-create and that is culturally defined and specific to the U.S.”
vida and bearing children should never ever..never be used in one sentence.
abhi you are ruining it for me.
Well, except that “curviness” is pretty consistently thought of as attractive across human cultures. “Looking like a heroin addict” is specific to the West.
If evolution has nothing to do with it, then I think it makes no sense to say “Oh, men like curvy women because of their reproductive capacity – as defined by evolution, but women like skinny women because they have a sense of self-hatred that they self-create and that is culturally defined and specific to the U.S.”
evolution doesn’t have one simple answer. evolution may impose constraints and biases, but it doesn’t always straight-jacket human culture. oh, and black & latino americans still like them kind of fat (“thick” as a latino friend of mine liked to say). the media is not the king of all culture.
Why doesn’t the above statement “make sense” to you ?
I’m not American, so it’s worth mentioning for the record at this point that phrases like “self-hatred”, “self-create”, or indeed “self-congratulatory” and “heteronormativity” (most of which are frequently used by various commenters on SM) are jargon-sounding terms which are not used in the United Kingdom and are not part of “British English”. We don’t think that way.
Again, the question of why excessively skinny models are used so much in the Western fashion industry — unless someone can correct me, this is a post-1950s thing, I believe (or is it even more recent than that ?) — can only be answered by someone with a sufficient level of inside knowledge.
Neal’s last post (above) made an excellent point too.
Abhi,
do you really believe that women inherently think skinny is the ideal body type in the same way as men inherently think that curvy is ideal because of the evolutionary birthing etc factors?
I am hoping that you are just being a contrarian here.
Please say yes or no to this!
do you really believe that women inherently think skinny is the ideal body type in the same way as men inherently think that curvy is ideal because of the evolutionary birthing etc factors?
i don’t think abhi said that. he dug himself into a hole, sure, but the conversation isn’t going to go anywhere if you rephrase his ideas into a caricature.
Historically full bodied women were always more desireable for the reasons Abhi points out and also because a little meat proved that you weren’t poor and working in the fields.
Furthermore, the fashion industry also changed dramatically post 1920s when women started showing more skin. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it would seem to me that they (women) were the driving force behind that trend due to new found freedoms. If that is true, wouldn’t it support Abhi’s market driven argument?
Finally, thought that came to mind that I’d just throw out there. Is it possible that designers, and hence the publications that show their designs, started preferring skinny women because it’s easier to make dresses for them?
No, that isn’t what I was saying. I was saying that in the U.S. women choose to consume the skinny waif ideal while men (as in most other parts of the world) choose to consume the curvier ideal. As Razib pointed out evolutionary pressure is never the only factor. Also, how many of the women in these magazines (I’m asking because I don’t read them) are REALLY waifs as opposed to being thin? I’m taking a complete guess of course but I’d bet the thin/waif ratio is pretty large. I can’t imagine women consuming magazines that would fall too far outside of their natural instincts of what is deemed “fit.”
The bomb was, why don’t you think about how the other person might feel rather than pretend like you’re doing your commenting out of some love for her. You’re the one referring to yourself in extremely negative terms.
Sorry – I did not mean to caricature. I was trying to point out the place where what many of the women are saying diverges from what Abhi is saying.
It is true that women choose to purchase these magazines and help perpetuate the anorexic culture – and they have to take full responsibility for it.
However, what many people are pointing out is that these women were influenced by the magazines they saw in their formative years and what was told to them by their mothers.
This whole thinness bias is (I think) related to women being more attractive if they are weaker and hence in need of protection by men which is the “natural order”. So my theory would be that this has been picked up by women over the generations and is now being reinforced by parents and now magazines too. Yes women are to plame – but it helps to understand underlying factors. You know you can say that the women who are anorexic are to blame for their condition, and it is true that they are, but I think the society that we have built and that all of us together shape also has some responsibility
amanda
I’ve heard the expression “clothes look best on a hanger” in reference to the use of bony, skinny models.
Honestly I have always believed that it’s the film/TV industry that leads fashion. You have pop culture icons like Sarah Jessica Parker, Paris Hilton, Jennifer Aniston who play muses to couture and big design houses.
If you think of the actresses that are popular today and who were around 10 years ago as well, think of what they looked like back then and how they do now. Aniston & Cox from Friends, Patricia Headen from Everybody Loves Raymond, Heather Locklear from the days of Dynasty (or was it Colbys) to today, Whitney Houston, Lara Flynn Boyle from Twin Peeks days, Cameron Diaz, Calista Flockheart, Sara Michelle Geller…Think of Keira Knightly, Kate Bosworth. I can go on and on.
Till Hollywood continues with this trend women will continue to believe that perfection comes from being super skinny. And it IS women who demand that women look the way they do in magazines. If you put the picture of a “fuller” model in a magazine or as product models the stuff will NOT sell. Focus groups whether they are made of impressionable 15 year old women or 40 year old housewives will always want to see skinny models. No one wants to look at heavier models. Dove did a huge campaign about the “real women” out there and it was fabulous as a woman to see healthy women of all shapes and sizes but I hate to say it, that campaign bombed for them. Their products have not seen a lift of any sort as a result of that campaign.
just a note, in the USA and most developed nations the poor are fatter than the rich.
Amanda, ask your guy friends about this. I can’t think of a single dude I know that wants to be with a weak woman in need of protection. Look at the current crop of Hollywood women we drool over. Jennifer Garner in Alias kicked ass and took names. Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, ditto. Charlies’ Angeles. Uma Thruman in Kill Bill. Tough women are the ideal right now.
While great-great-great-great….-grand Abhi was out hunting woolly mammoth he didn’t want to have to worry about protecting his girl too. He only wanted to protect her from being hit on by the other dudes in his tribe. Men do like to feel needed but we don’t want a frail weak woman.
once again, far too many over-generalizations…
what are some basics… we are a consumer market, therefore if a product doesn’t sell then it won’t be made. so if magazines with ‘skinny women’ on the cover are being sold, someone’s buying them. who is buying them depends on so many factors. market research questionnaires try to identify target audiences by sex, age strata, consumer interests, social/economic strata, profession, etc… so it’s hardly an easy response as to who is propagating the sales for a particular kind of magazine. maybe in places like LA where body image is given far greater importance (so it seems from what i hear anyway), the skinny model magazines mey be sold more (greater public demand). maybe in the southwest, home and garden magazines sell more. maybe the skinny model mags sell more to the teenage, mid-20s female demographic… specific market research reports aren’t easily accesible… and i can’t google away right now
based on what i personally see on magazine racks, the most common women’s magazines seem to be cosmopolitan, glamour and the O magazine… now, oprah’s does not have a BMI lower than the mean range, and she is on the cover of ALL her magazines, these have great sales and great material…
This whole thinness bias is (I think) related to women being more attractive if they are weaker and hence in need of protection by men which is the “natural order”.
sick women are weaker. just because a reductive evolutionary explanation is not viable doesn’t mean we need reductive social explanations about ‘power relations.’
proximately i think the ‘thin is in’ is prolly a lot to do with elite emulation. like i said, black and latino women tend to be plagued by fewer body image issues, and in fact, morbid obesity is a serious problem in these communities. but the ‘role models’ are different in these communities. asian american women tend to have the same issues as white women.
btw, the minority of men who are into body building exhibit the same tendency to overgeneralize a positive trend toward muscular. surveys show that super-buff males ‘overshoot’ the preferred female optimum, but i have body-building friends who just can’t get freaky enough. a lot of it has to do with peer competition among these gym rats.
The weird thing is that, in the examples of actresses you mentioned, they don’t look as bony and emaciated on screen as they do in the tabloids, etc… In fact, if they did their “sexpot” reputations would just bomb out. So what’s up with that?
ok, my theory was weak – it fails – in fact all men I have been with do prefer strong (physically and mentally) women.
However, I urge that we try to discuss the reasons behind this, rather than say “women prefer thin ideals even though it doesn’t make sense”. This just paints women as being irrational/mad. Many smart women on this board have stated that they have dealt with body image issues related to the thin ideal – is it possible this is because half the population (okay approximately half – some women might be totally secure with not being very thin) is just mad and does have basic self-preservation instincts?
I think the reason probably stems (at least partially) from the fact that thin (NOT waif) is perceived as a sign of reproductive fitness and success in the West. As Razib points out, in the U.S. the poor and non-elites are more overweight than the elite, who are closer to the ideal weight. That is a subconscious cue that if you want to be an elite (as everyone does) you have to be thin like them. In reality the elite often have better nutrition and exercise options and aren’t forced to feed their families at the affordable Mickey D’s. It isn’t so much that they are thin but more fit. To the average woman who doesn’t have the time or resources to maintain fitness, dieting becomes the fastest solution (possibly leading to eating disorders). Just a theory.
&$#%&@#&^^$&@#$&!@$&@#%&%#$@#%%@#&#@$&@#$&!@^$&!!!!!!
good night
Except that now eating disorders are also gaining popularity within specific sub cultures of the US, i.e. the African americans. Another example of emulating the elite? Either that or the white, mainstream media has managed to infiltrate into certain groups on a level that hasn’t necessarily been as obvious as before.
Alright, I am going to stand up and declare: The plump girls had it good in the Renaissance, I am sure the skinny girls got the left-overs (they werenÂ’t anyoneÂ’s muse) so this is the century of the skinny girl! Let us have our day, I donÂ’t go around saying, “God you are a size 16”, so really you shouldnÂ’t go around rolling your eyes saying, “You are a size 1, I hate you!” I dare someone to call me tits on a stick, you might just find that stick up your….
I honestly don’t think this is the driving factor, although I understand the logic. Also, for clarification, my previous comment (evolution vs. self-hatred) was facetious. 🙂
And further, all this “consumer society women like thin women” stuff completely ignores that women have also been socially conditioned and inundated with super skinny images for a long time, now. It’s also important to note that typically men are the drivers of the fashion industry in terms of designers, fashion moguls, etc. Something to chew on. I personally loved the Dove ads, and I also love Scarlett Johansson. I’m probably not the “average” female consumer, but still, there is definitely a market for other body types in the media. This could be circular logic; maybe “less thin” types don’t seem to sell because when you were young all you saw were skinny types, and you were taught that this was beautiful. Then when you grow up you prefer skinny types because this was your social conditioning.
Also, someone brought up earlier that the waif/thin model seems to be more of a “white” aesthetic. What’s painful to watch is how women, particularly women of color, feel confined by those same aesthetics when oftentimes they are simply unrealistic and damaging. I, for one, would love to see way more images of “thick,” curvy, fit women of color in the media. Perhaps we need to challenge the dynamic a bit more.
Look, no one is saying they hate skinny women. The concern is over women who feel the pressure to diet or starve themselves into a body type that is not normal or natural for them. Additionally, there was a strong class bias and socioeconomic dynamic to the Rubenesque form of Renaissance models which has nothing to do (in my opinion) with the current size dynamics.
And also, who said they hated you, or Ms. Desai for that matter?
It’s also important to note that typically men are the drivers of the fashion industry in terms of designers, fashion moguls, etc.
gay men.
is perceived as a sign of reproductive fitness and success in the West.
we need to decouple the proximate behavioral biases and their ultimate evolutionary contexts. there isn’t a reproductive reason that males jerk off to thousands of pixels arranged on a screen with simulate a woman spreading open her ‘special place.’ that’s just the brain perceiving something that we know rationally isn’t there. e.g., highly educated women tend to have fewer children that less educated women, so the status markers aren’t accruing reproductive success right now.
i read somewhere that all of this comes down to the tested hip/waist ratio business (tested across time, gender, cultures etc.) — we should obviously resemble pears and not apples (women and men). the golden number is supposed to be .8 for women — apparently this will guarantee you an enviable number of mating proposals. seems to me that .8 ain’t no waif. here’s a calculator: http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/whr
my line of thinking about this is a little different… i was wondering… when did these magazines, featuring ‘ideal’ women on the cover, start? back then, were the photographers/ editors/ writers in charge of putting these magazines together predominantly male or female? back then, who decided what the ideal woman was for the cover of a magazine? was it based on a sense of existing public appeal or was the public expectation created by the industry by promoting new/controversial projections of an ideal women (marilyn monroe, madonna, pamela anderson)
it seems to me that the media/advertising/publishing industries have a strange relationship with the mainstream public. yes they do seek to target our needs and interests, and guage their success by their sales records and rankings… but are we immune to the images/ideas/ideals that these industries project onto us? are we subconsciously feeding them even though we may not relate with them or agree with them… even when they may instigate unhealthy thinking/ eating?
who needs to be stronger to turn the current ‘norms’ around? the industry or the consumers?
i think that the O magazine gets away without the ideal/skinny woman image on the cover because that image is replaced by a ‘high-power woman’ icon. Oprah is still an icon, if not the ‘skinny model/ beauty’ icon but that of power. this comes back to the whole feminist debates, what empowers women etc… physical beauty, power, intelligence… how many itelligent women icons are on the cover of magazines. who is responsible for this not happening more often? the industry (for not providing the option) or the public (for not voicing the need for it)?
pop culture is complicated…
the golden number is supposed to be .8 for women — apparently this will guarantee you an enviable number of mating proposals. seems to me that .8 ain’t no waif. here’s a calculator: http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/whr
i think it is 0.7.
to each their own decimel point i suppose.
Yeah that is a question too. We’ve established that most men who are sexually attracted to women don’t actually find extremely thin women attractive. So might the growing dominance of people who don’t actually look at women sexually (eg: gay men and straight women) in the “image industry” have something to do with the changing aesthetic?
I don’t mean this is in a “blame the gays” way or anything like that. But I mean — if the perception of “attractiveness” is as immediately impacted by evolutionary biology as you anthropologists and geneticists are saying, doesn’t this throw an interesting curve into the media critique?
Well Camille, firstly it was from personal experience (numerous shopping trips) also the whole ‘wide child bearing hips’,‘clothes hangerÂ’ bit and so on. I am not a supporter of bulimia/anorexia or any eating disorder, I canÂ’t even keep a fast I such a food hog, I had a cousin who was anorexic and there was nothing I could tell her to make her think she was beautiful so I do recognise that media has basically f the situation up,but there is a stigma attached to thin women and I just wanted to bring that to light, the grass aint greener on any side. And women will alway try to live up to what they percieve as an ideal, we cant stop it, it has been happening for centuries. Why do you think every pair of shoes I own has a 3 inch heel, I percieve it as an ideal and I would do anything to be 3 inches taller!!!
le’s be straight up, some models (not ms. desai) look like trannies. not the glamor models who crossover into swimsuit editions, but a lot of the chix on runways. a lot of ’em even have AIS from what i’ve heard.
re: AIS, i don’t mean “lots” as in 10%. but way more than the general population. some forms of AIS, female looking individuals who are very tall, are conducive toward generating the build that is the norm among runway models.
Camille though I agree that no one here is saying they hate on skinny women, I do agree with CinnamonRani in so much that i’m a little concerned that commentors here are so quick to judge a woman who may or may not just happen to be thin.
i’m a skinny woman, in my younger days was probably what some people here would describe as “severely underweight” due purely to my metabolism and genetics. and what i’ve found is that people who wouldn’t dream of questing an overweight or even normal sized person are very quick to ask tactless quesionts like “how much do you weigh?” or “what size pants do you wear?” or “what did you eat for lunch today?” And on top of which are offended when i decline answer the question. while i’m not saying that i experience nearly as much bias as an overweight person, i am saying that (and this comment thread does prove it to an extent) that normally very polite people feel okay in dissecting an underweight person rather then an overweight person.
and while many people here are claiming concern for the young lady’s health, i doubt reading 240+ comments dissecting her phyiscal appearance would do anything for Miss GB’s assumed eating disorder.
I think this is a very common myth that has now turned into a urban legend that straight men like to throw around and no it’s not from homophobia but rather the “well we aren’t asking women to be skinny so it must be the gays”.
The fashion industry is run by 90% women. I would really love to see this concept ‘gay men are responsible for skinny women’ argument go away. I’ve heard it far too many times. Women want to see other skinny women. Victoria Secret caters to women NOT men. Victoria Secret is run by women who believe that if you make a woman look beautiful and feel like a goddess a man would find her desirable. It caters to the inner feminist that says ‘take control of your sexuality with your man and your sex life, be proactive in your hotness’.
I know I used to work there. You could put a woman in a plain bra and panty, if she’s attractive chances are strong a man could care less if the ensemble was from Kmart or Victoria Secret.
It’s the women who want to see skinny women. And yes they may have been brainwashed into a ridiculous body image thru culture but its not THE GAYS!
JOAT:
Just to be clear, I didn’t say “gay men” are responsible, I said the fact that the industry is dominated by people who aren’t sexually attracted to women are is responsible. That means “gay men and straight women” (as I said in my original post too). Your post indicates that it seems to be straight women MORE than gay men, which is really interesting to learn.
But then the natural question is: why? If women hate that media image so much, why do they perpetuate it? Why does it sell?
Take cover. It’s the attack of THE GAYS!
Basically, I’m asking if society has just basically devolved to “Heathers” on a global scale…