The skinny on being skinny, part 1

All across the world, men and women are obsessed with beauty. It's oozed and crept into every facet of our lives to the point that 1 in 5 Americans, including children have some sort of mental disorder. We see size zero models dance across our screen, magazines and billboards in a flurry of elegance, beauty and wealth. Men see these and say "wow.. i'd sure like my gal to look like that" and women see it and say "wow, if i don't look like that I'll never find love or be happy" and unfortunately our children think the same things. We have children as young as three years old developing low self esteem, poor body image and disorders such as depression, over eating and bulimia or anorexia. Our children are being told at younger and younger ages that they should look like these models. This is seen in Pre teen sensations like Hannah Montana and Hillary Duff, and with commercial products like Nair Pretty (so your ten your old's coochie can be nice and smooth). Children are having sex younger and younger, girls are getting their periods younger as well as their bodies react to the sexual stimulus around them. In one case in 1995 an eight year old girl got pregnant while having sex with another eight year old on the playground behind a tree. The baby, of course, had to be aborted because there's no way an eight year old's body can handle childbirth. But think about that for a second.. think about a nine year old mother. Can you imagine it? I can't.

Apart from the mental damage that's being done to the general population, there's the issue of the model's health. many models, striving to be that perfect size (size zero) develop eating disorders and drug problems. Cocaine is a nice fast way to shed a few pounds. So is speed. Models are literally dying to be thin.

Let's forget about models for a second and think about the average person. After all, I already did a piece on modeling. This is a piece on weight and health in general. Most doctors or nutritionists, when they want to see how healthy you are, check your BMI or body mass index. Underweight is defined as a BMI of less than 18.5, normal defined as up to 25, overweight up to 30, obese up to 40 and morbidly obese is anything over that. The biggest problem with judging a person's health based on this system is that it doesn't take into account bone density, muscle mass or fluid retention. Here's an example of someone, based on their BMI, who's morbidly obese: (picture to the right). Now that really doesn't seem right, does it? If that's morbidly obese then what's obese? Hell, what's normal? This scale, not only doesn't take other factors into account, but is also severely outdated. It doesn't matter how skinny or fat you are, your health is not directly related. For example, did you see the episode of Opera with the fat aerobics instructor? In fact, this is a growing trend all across the US. Personal trainers and aerobics instructors alike are no longer rail thin. Being trim and muscular has little to do with being cardiovascular fit. What is that? It means that your heart is healthy and your arteries are unclogged (which is the only reason that being overweight is supposedly a problem). There are many skinny-fat people in the world. People who are thin and look completely healthy but have little muscle and almost pure body fat with clogged arteries galore!

There's such a stigma in our society and weight and health are always 100% related and they're wrong. In fact, from an evolutionary standpoint, being skinny is about as unhealthy as you can get. If you're thin and eat tons then you have a racing fast metabolism. Good for you, right? But, if something were to happen where you had less food, you'd be out of luck. During a famine you'd be the first to die and if you were suddenly to become dirt poor with no help, you'd cost way too much to feed. In many places around the world fat is still seen as the ultimate beauty because larger women are better for baring healthy children and they're easier to take care of. (In a hunter gatherer society a fat person would have needed far less care than a skinny person, maybe this is why thin people today are still seen as high maintenance)

What's more, a study conducted in 2000 by the nobel prize-winning genetecist who was jointly responsible for discovering the structure of DNA, found that overweight men and women are generally happier and have better sex. Extra fat has the added bonus of boosting endorphines, those chemicals in the body that make you happy and stimulates sexual desire. Watson (our geneticist), theorized that long ago men would have spent most of their time looking for food. The reward for all this gathering would be eating and gaining weight, meaning that a thin man would need to spend more time hunting and was less successful. Watson concludes, that in evolutionary terms, thing equals discontent.

Think about it, who's ever seen a thin Santa Clause? Think about a grandma, isn't she usually plump and smiling, getting ready to bake fresh cookies? What's your idea of the typical grumpy old man? He's thin and bony, always scowling. There's a stereotype that fat people always have a good sense of humor and that they have better personalities. How many times have you heard someone say that if you see a knockout babe that has a good personality, she must have been fat at some point. (There's a good example in Shallow Hal)

One thing i'm not saying is that it's okay to be unhealthy at any weight. I'm not saying celebrate being fat no matter what. I'm sayig celebrate your health, no matter what. If you're fat and healthy then go with it! If you're thin and healthy then go with it! But don't think that your weight makes you unhealthy (within reason).