Comments on: The Shrinking Decade

By: Felipe

Felipe — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:10:59 +0000

I think the point that your mental “ideal size” has nothing to do with the attentions of men is spot on. “The incredible shrinking woman” is a cultural artifact that has nothing much to do with what heterosexual men find attractive and much more to do with what makes clothes look “good” in a fashion shoot. Problem is, as this article points out, like all bits of our culture the relationship between the “media” and what they claim to represent is a complicated and reciprocal one. And I’m not sure how we break the cycle.

By: Britt7094

Britt7094 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:33:03 +0000

This is something that’s been on my mind for years. We’re living in an age of strong women, the media seems to be compensating by making them frail and delicate? I know, it’s terrible logic but it’s the only reasoning I can think for promoting that as an acceptable size. I used to be extremely self concious because I thought I was fat and this is the reason why, the images we are bombarded with. Now I realise that I’m actually normal but try telling that to a teenager, it just does not happen. I go into clothes shops now and see petite clothes for women who are short (at last) and plus sizes all separated out in their own little section with signs and all sorts but I notice the size 4-6 clothing that a child could fit into are put at the front of the pegs with the average sizes of 10-14. I feel a little disgusted by this, that we have to rummage past the sizes that a fraction of the population fit into, probably less (though I imagine the amount is growing) than the amount of people fitting plus sizes and petite clothing, to get to the average sizes.

And that’s my rant, an excellent blog post.

By: @frak

@frak — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:18:37 +0000

I think this just demonstrates the power that the media have over our lives – totally irrationally.

Nice, well written article.