Anorexia

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, a regular column on spin and skulduggery, pseudoscience and shenanigans. This week we’re looking at Mattel’s decision to make a bald Barbie.

Yep, looks just like a normal girl with a terrible disease. Pic: The Daily Telegraph

Bald Barbie – or bald-friend-of-Barbie – will be distributed in hospitals to kids with cancer, or other conditions which make them lose their hair. Mattel said it “demonstrates Mattel’s commitment to encourage play as a respite for children in the hospital and bring joy to children in need”. Aw.

Mattel are responding to a Facebook page calling for a bald doll to help all children suffering hairloss, and only the cynical would suggest it was also responding to the February announcement that Barbie’s main competitors – Bratz and Moxie Girlz dolls – would be getting hairless friends.

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  • stephen says:

    05:04pm | 07/04/12

    It’s more about the meaning of the dolls, Alycia, rather than an impression. Kika, above said that it is natural for girls to want to be like a mum and mother their dolls ... and I’m not so sure. I mean, I’ve never been a girl, or had kids -… Read more »

  • Alycia says:

    03:08pm | 06/04/12

    As a kid, I never looked to Barbie and moaned about/compared/bawled/ about her waistline. Kids don’t look at that stuff. Adults do, but kids don’t. Sometimes people, when they make their comments on all these doll companies, fail to look at the dolls through eyes of a kid. Okay yeah,… Read more »

 

Full credit to designer and Australia’s Next Top Model judge, Alex Perry, for declaring he would never call a model “fat”, and that his fashion embraces curvy women.

One of Perry's 'curvy' models. Phwoar, practically plus size! Pic: Noel Kessel

Perry took a media beating this week, and with what seemed good cause: Appearing to suggest that a size eight teen was too fat to model.

Not only was comparing her to “overstuffed luggage” offensive (even if he was referring more to her pose, in a coffin of all things, than to her body), it was dangerous. Mountains of research attests that “socio-cultural” pressure - ideas picked up from TV, fashion magazines and other media -  is a leading cause of the eating disorder epidemic among young Australians.

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  • jim morris says:

    10:29am | 10/09/11

    One thing for sure, feminism is made hysteria mainstream and crying almost mandatory. Read more »

  • jim morris says:

    10:26am | 10/09/11

    Where did the expression ‘suck it up’ come from? And why are people using it? It sounds so disgusting. Read more »

 

Of all the sick and creepy subcultures that flourish on the internet, few are more disturbing than the pro-ana websites devoted to the celebration of anorexia - not as a mental illness but a lifestyle choice.

Possibly a slightly confusing message in this ad campaign. Pic: Supplied

There are dozens of these shocking sites. Some of them are big-production numbers with well-designed photo galleries of scrawny models and external links to websites selling food substitutes and appetite suppressants.

Many of them are just sad little blogs by individual women who diarise their battle with their own body and share tips on how best to emaciate themselves.

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  • Willbefitandhealthysoon says:

    06:21pm | 11/09/11

    I am big boned and have no thyroid gland and although it makes it difficult for me to lose weight, it’s no excuse that I am size 14 going on 16 when I used to be a size 12 with proper diet and exercise and that size was ideal for… Read more »

  • fiona says:

    01:29am | 10/09/11

    Why must people constantly bring up obesity in this discussion? It’s about pro-anorexia. Yes there are feeder sites and (usually) women trying to achieve the most massive weight they can (Donna Simpson for one, though she is now turning their hand to weigh loss) But are there thousands of obese-wannabes… Read more »

 

Repeat after me: Models do not cause eating disorders. Really, they don’t.

This infamous billboard's message may have been misdirected. Photo: AP

The news which hit the headlines this week that nearly 100 children between the ages of five and seven had been diagnosed with eating disorders in the UK in recent years immediately prompted some stock-standard finger pointing (“It was the models wot done it!”), but it’s time to dispel a few myths about eating disorders.

For years, the scrawny, malnourished-looking girls who haunt the runways of Paris, Milan and New York have been accused of shoving women the world over just that much closer to starving themselves or sticking their fingers down their throats.

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  • Eva says:

    05:00pm | 06/08/11

    Innocent, I can recall walking out of Jaquie E in disgust one day. I had tried on every skirt variation they had on sale in first a size 8 and then a size 6. None fitted because the waist was the same diameter as the hips!!!!! The sales girl told… Read more »

  • Hamish says:

    03:31pm | 04/08/11

    Innocent, are you just showing off? Read more »

 

“No fat chicks” is not just a Homer Simpson-esque T-shirt slogan. It’s also the bottom line of the fashion industry. And when I use the word “bottom” here, I’m not referring to a voluptuously padded Venus of Willendorf derriere but one of those pointy Paris Hilton numbers that look like they could deliver a nasty needle-stick injury.

So which one of you ladies would like to eat this season?Photo: Lori's Wardrobe.

Cast an eye over shots from the big 2011 couture shows and you’ll see scores of emaciated young women limping down the runways with flesh-less knees, stringy necks and rib cages that make ET the extraterrestrial look like a fatty boomsticks.

These human coat hangers are held up as exemplars of feminine beauty yet are eerily reminiscent of Sidney Nolan’s infamous photos of dead-but-alive-looking cow and horse carcasses from drought-stricken Queensland during the 1950s.

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  • Michaela says:

    03:14pm | 01/07/11

    @ Lauren - thankyou. Read more »

  • Skinny Minnie says:

    12:21pm | 29/06/11

    Thank You!! I am 100% in the same boat… people have no probelm grabbing my waist and saying ‘omg.. ur so skinny!’.. just once i wish i had the nerve to say ‘yeah… and ur so fat!” but in the society we live in, we’re taught that thats wrong -… Read more »

 

Last week’s news of the death of anti-anorexia billboard model, Isabelle Caro, came one day after I gobbled Portia de Rossi’s graphic memoir about her battle with anorexia in almost one sitting. 

An anti-anorexia ad showing sufferer Isabelle Caro the former model who died last week. Picture: AFP

An Unbearable Lightness intrigued and terrified me.  De Rossi’s obsessive calorie counting, exhaustive exercise and waifish results seemed strangely juxtaposed with the delicious gluttony I’d experienced over Christmas - nine weeks after the birth of my third child – weighing my heaviest.

Female body image is a complex beast. It wrestles at some point with most of us - regardless of the skin we’re in. 

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  • fit-mama says:

    12:38am | 17/01/11

    @frankie - i had the same problem while completing my masters, working full time and had just had a baby.  just keep your weight steady during semester and go hardcore during the breaks, you’ll be fine.  Although I will warn you that employers are much more narcissistic when picking from… Read more »

  • Lauren says:

    03:41pm | 16/01/11

    Why do you need to be a size 10?  Are you actually overweight, or would you just prefer it because it is the ‘ideal’? Everyone comes in different shapes and so long as you fall within a healthy weight range, that’s all that matters.  Don’t live your life stressed out… Read more »

 

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