Jezebel.com discusses eating disorders and “fitness” magazines:
The hypocrisy of women’s “health” magazines becomes fairly obvious just by looking at their covers. For example, this month’s Self magazine features one cover line, “Be Happy And Healthy At Any Size” tucked below a much larger cover line: “3 Easy Ways To Lose Weight.”
Now, that is fairly benign. After all, you could say that they would like to do both: they want you to feel healthy and happy at whatever weight you may be, but they are also there for you if you need some help with weight loss. Fine.
But is it that simple? Referring to cover model Katharine McPhee they note:
…seeing a confessed bulimic in a bikini on the cover of a fitness magazine, surrounded by articles on how to blast fat and cut calories, sets off a ton of alarm bells…
It’s one thing to encourage someone to become fit and healthy and improve their nutritional status. You can’t argue with any of that.
But that’s a far cry from setting an impossible standard which then causes women to feel they can never measure up.
We already know Self editor Lucy Danziger’s take on her own publication, as she notes that photoshop is used to “inspire women to want to be their best.” By “their best,” naturally, she means, “their thinnest.”
Retouching photos with photoshop is supposed to help women be their best? How would that work exactly?
It is fine to present women at their most attractive. There is nothing wrong with that.
But there is something wrong with presenting an impossible-to-achieve image as the ideal, one which a woman either reaches or else considers herself a failure.
That is not healthy or fair. It may be taking things a bit too far just to sell some magazines.
http://jezebel.com/5450224/on-pseudo+fitness-magazines-and-eating-disorders
