http://www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.shtml
This is exactly the kind of thing I wish I could have seen as a young woman, struggling with body image and, indeed, some body dysmorphism. I remember being 21 or so, in a store shopping with my mom, pointing out other women to her and asking, "Am I fatter than she is? Is my butt as big as hers?" I really had no idea. I could probably have looked at a woman who was exactly my size and estimated she was ten or twenty pounds lighter than me. I could have looked at a woman exactly my height and weight and thought she looked fine while I was "fat," and totally disbelieved that she weighed what I did.
I looked at the woman on that chart who correlates with "me" today--should I say it? I'm gonna say it, publicly. It'll be good for me, I'm sure--the woman who's 5'2 and 130, because I was 128 the last time I checked (within the last couple weeks), and I thought, yeah. She looks fine. Normal. Not too thin, not too fat. HWP, as they say. Fine. Therefore (at least with my clothes on) I must look just fine too.
There's so much outright lying about this in the media in all kinds of directions--if you're a female celebrity, your published weight is adjusted down, until you reach scary-anorexic levels, at which point it's publicly adjusted up, and if you're a male celebrity, your height is adjusted up, and if you're a pro athlete, I dunno, they just make up stats for both height and weight out of thin air. And then no one has any idea what a person who's 5'2 and 130 or 5'9 and 210 or 6'3 and 150 really looks like. (I've seen/heard young guys, for example, making remarks that any woman who weighs over 150 must be morbidly obese. Um, no.) It's ludicrous, but it's why projects like the one on that website are so valuable. Somebody's got to combat the media nonsense.
xoxo
5 comments:
Wow...the 5'2" 210 lb woman looks great!
I finally broke down and watched "How to Love Being Naked" last night...and while Carson was a bit over the top at times and seemed a bit fake...watching the womans reaction...well...Im hooked on this show now.Was crying right along with her...lol.
And..Im contemplating booking a nude/ boudoir photo session. Because that woman last night looked gorgeous in hers.
I've only seen that show a couple times, but yeah! It's exactly the same thing.
When I saw it, they did the lineup part where the woman has, say, 41 inch hips and they have women with hips from 40 to 48 inch hips in line by size, and then the subject has to fit herself in where she should go. And the subject women are just so off, they think they're the same size as someone six or eight inches bigger. Their mental image of their own body has next to nothing to do with reality.
The boudoir photos are an awesome idea. Any kind of professonal photography done by someone who knows how to do portraits is a good idea. There needs to be an antidote to all the crappy ID photos and horribly bad cell phone pics that make most of us think omg! we really look like that in real life when omg! we really don't. :-)
You most definitely look just fine!
I suspect that sort of body view dysmorphism is very common among women, though I wouldn't be surprised if it effects certain men, like those who go hardcore into body building.
I agree on the media exacerbating the problem with completely bogus celebrity "statistics" that bear no relationship whatsoever to the actual body of the person under discussion. For celebrities you can never be too thin (or too rich) and their publicity agents make sure you hear plenty of fantasy numbers about both.
For athletes it's the same thing. According to the official Red Sox statistics Jason Varitek is 6'2" and while David Ortiz is 6'4", yet they both weigh the exact same 230 pounds. Who are they freaking kidding? If Varitek is within 30 pounds of Ortiz I'd be shocked... for both of them.
And Dustin Pedroia is 5'9" (or 180)? I don't think so...
I think you're right, due to media bogosity nobody knows what those numbers really mean. I remember J telling me about male Harvard classmates who'd literally say things like "I'd never date anyone bigger than a size 2" when one look at their girlfriends saw they were a size 6, 8, or 10... and the guys had no idea at all.
They didn't know what those numbers meant, they just assumed "the lower the better", and low number automatically equalled "more attractive".
That's what I mean about those pro athlete stats being made up out of thin air! Big Papi is 230? I don't think so.
Maybe Big Papi really is 230 and Jason Varitek puffs up his numbers to make the opposing players tense about running into him too hard???????
Nah, I don't think so.
I wouldn't be surprised if Varitek's numbers are right (though even if he was perfectly happy to put up his right numbers I wouldn't be surprised if the Sox's press department manipulated them for effect) but they don't call David Ortiz "Big" Papi for nothing.
Because at 6'4" I suspect the last time he only weighed 230 he was in the minor leagues!
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