This Is For You, "The Ladies"
I really enjoyed Linda's whole rant about Salon's new section "for the ladies," but was especially intrigued by this part:
"You want to be taken seriously as a publication that cares about women? Quit it with the pink and start thinking coherently about the entire publication. Stop running stories about overweight girls where the accompanying picture is of a girl dreaming of a goddamn donut."
So then I had to go look at the article about the donut dreaming. It's worth sitting through the ad for, and it's even worth looking at the annoying donut picture.
"As I sit with them on the riverbank, it's clear the Wellspring girls are obsessed with food, all right -- the food they're not allowed to eat. Their talk is peppered with paeans to waffles, Pringles, beef and chicken. One girl, who has been at the camp only a week, pledges defiantly to drink a gallon of juice when she gets home. But the food chatter comes to a halt when the campers spy a girl nearby whose body is everything theirs are not."
The punchline, of course, is that the girl is ten years old.
Then there's the girl who doesn't want to lose weight, but is at the camp because her mother is scared nobody will be her friend if she's fat.
"'You're the weirdest person I've ever met in my life!' the other girl replies. 'Even tiny girls want to lose weight.' The campers chime in about how incredibly annoying those tiny girls are, the ones who whine about how fat they are but who are really a size 4 or 6 or 8. But a big girl who doesn't wish she were slimmer? The campers can't even comprehend it."
I read the whole article with interest, and recommend it!
"You want to be taken seriously as a publication that cares about women? Quit it with the pink and start thinking coherently about the entire publication. Stop running stories about overweight girls where the accompanying picture is of a girl dreaming of a goddamn donut."
So then I had to go look at the article about the donut dreaming. It's worth sitting through the ad for, and it's even worth looking at the annoying donut picture.
"As I sit with them on the riverbank, it's clear the Wellspring girls are obsessed with food, all right -- the food they're not allowed to eat. Their talk is peppered with paeans to waffles, Pringles, beef and chicken. One girl, who has been at the camp only a week, pledges defiantly to drink a gallon of juice when she gets home. But the food chatter comes to a halt when the campers spy a girl nearby whose body is everything theirs are not."
The punchline, of course, is that the girl is ten years old.
Then there's the girl who doesn't want to lose weight, but is at the camp because her mother is scared nobody will be her friend if she's fat.
"'You're the weirdest person I've ever met in my life!' the other girl replies. 'Even tiny girls want to lose weight.' The campers chime in about how incredibly annoying those tiny girls are, the ones who whine about how fat they are but who are really a size 4 or 6 or 8. But a big girl who doesn't wish she were slimmer? The campers can't even comprehend it."
I read the whole article with interest, and recommend it!
posted by mo pie at 6:27 AM
3 Comments:
I read that article back when it was first published and the 10-year-old girl thing seemed so weird to me. She can't possible even have boobs yet, nevermind the thigh and hip fat that comes with puberty. She must still look like a boy. Why do so many girls want to look like 10-year-old boys?
Another dirty little secret, if you just go to http://www.salon.com/news/cookie756.html you never have to sit through ads. Salon is a little sloppy with the way they dole out cookies (not the baked kind).
Although I feel that we all need to learn good nutrition and be mindful of what we eat, it sounds like these kids are set on a one-way trip to Obsessionville. That kind of super-control is possible for only so long, then the body fights back.
(who is also Kirsten, but not the same one)
Yes, very interesting article, and I'd like to read Abby Ellin's "Teenage Waistland" if I ever come across it.
I haven't quite come to a decision on whether the camp's modus operandi is a good idea. It's a good point, that a lot of overweight teenagers are a mine of nutritional information already - they just have more trouble applying what they know.
One thing I would like to say: not all ten-year-olds look the same. When I was ten, I looked a lot older and thought I was really fat because I had curves where other girls didn't. I wasn't. It's a very common story, especially with teenage girls: they don't appreciate that they look OK, because they're too busy comparing to other people who may not be at the same stage of development even if their chronological age is the same. I'm so glad I'm not a teenager any more.
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