Portrayal of women: (split)

[Neil]

Originally Posted by accymel

everybody even me have some form of hang up over our own bodies

I have left some space above for you to list them Mel

[Gayle]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

It's actully been pointed out to me before Neil that I'm fat and therefore ugly and I don't dispute that. How could I? I look at photographs of myself and I don't like what I see. I look at photographs of what I once looked like and wish that I still looked like that. I'll find a couple of contrasting images of myself to show you what I mean.

No, please don't do that Willow. Neil is right (look at that Neil, we're agreeing again), beauty is absolutely nothing to do with size - as I'm sure Busman will also confirm. Beauty is far more than that and fortunately there are men out there who like all different types of women.

I'm not conventionally beautiful and according to Less I'm dumpy, add to that the view that my children have of me with a wrinkly forehead and wobbly belly and I could have a real downer on my body image. We all have issues with the way we look but beauty is well and truly in the eye of the beholder and so no one should ever allow anyone else to call them ugly and no one should ever call themselves that.

As we get older things change and we have to accept that we are never going to look like we did at 20 again but we can't beat ourselves up about it.

Willow, you have so much more to offer than physical beauty, please don't do yourself an injustice.

[accymel]

Who sets the rules for beauty? what one can see as beautiful another can see as not so [ugly is not a nice term] we set our own rules for it, as for having gone thro councelling a lot of it is in the mind & attitude - i much rather someone be beautiful in the inside than on the outside - trust me! I've known some outsidely good looking people but absolutely horrible on the inside, to deem an outside attractiveness takes about 30 secs but then what u want to find is that the outside matches the inside.

[accymel]

Originally Posted by Neil

I have left some space above for you to list them Mel

LOL im not listing them mind u theres not anything that i would go under the knife for so cant be that bad i've learnt to accept myself wrinkly & wobbly an all that least its mine

[WillowTheWhisp]

OK, here we have me about 17 years ago before I started trying to lose weight. Please ignore hideously baggy bottomed jeans! I have no idea why I thought they were appealing but I liked them at the time!! I look back on this and hopefully without sounding conceited I now think this is an attractive image. I didn't at the time because I felt my bum was too big and I wanted it to be smaller, hence the dieting.



Here we have me a couple of years ago. This is not an attractive image. In no way can this image be described as anything but ugly and fat. I am the first to admit that.



But I don't think the superwaif catwalk models are any more attractive or any less ugly than the second photo of me and yet they intend to look like that and they are expected to look like that by a fashion industry which says that looking like that is necessary in order to be a fashion model. Why else would the pleasantly attractive Sophie Dahl have conformed? She was already beautiful but she spoiled her beauty in order to conform.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Gayle

according to Less I'm dumpy

So from other recent posts, if dimbo is a dim bimbo and dumbo is short for dim jumbo then dumpy must mean dumb and lumpy.
Thats not very nice of Less, I think you are very intelligent Gayle

[Gayle]

Groucho Marks once said - if you want to get a beautiful woman into bed tell them they're smart and if you want to get an intelligent woman into bed tell them they're beautiful!

[WillowTheWhisp]

Groucho Marks missed an obvious point there - an intelligent woman would be intelligent enough not to fall for a dumb line like that!

[garinda]

Sophie Dahl is an interesting point, re: the fashion industry's attitude to size. When she became the face of Yves Saint Laurent she was a size 14.

Gasp!

An 'outsize' model was chosen to front one of the world's leading fashion companies!

After gaining a lot of good publicity for the company, a year later she was quietly dropped and replaced by Kate Moss. She's said in interviews since that in order to carry on finding work, once the novelty had worn off about 'outsize' models, remember she was a size 14 and six foot tall, she felt compelled to diet. She's now a size 8. Still beautiful, but the point is she was compelled to become thinner if she wanted to work.



Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but certainly wasn't present in some of the foul mouthed posts from the early hours of Sunday morning, that have since been deleted, and to refer to me as a 'milk shaker', which I have taken to refer to Parkinson's, and which showed a very ugly attitude.

[WillowTheWhisp]

Good grief is size 14 is outsize then what the heck are the upper end of M&S never mind Evan's where I shop!

I agree that Sophie Dahl still has a pretty face but her body looked it's best before she went to extremes.

To insult someone due to an illness or disability is very ugly indeed and rather sad. There was a girl I was at school with who used to refer to a disabled classmate who wore leg braces as "a spaz" and thought it was clever to do so. Not surprisngly she was the one who didn't end up with many friends.

[CASPER]

I have only one thing to say in this thread and that is that BEAUTY comes from WITHIN. Some of the things that have been said on this thread have not been very Beautiful, however I can see both sides and do see where you are coming from.

Willow DO NOT pull yourself down, there are enough people out there in the world waiting to do that! I know that you are a very beautiful, caring person, and that means far more to others than wether you are slim or not.

Love to everyone, I think we need a GROUP HUG !!!!!!!!!

[Tinkerbelle]

[color=darkorchid]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp**[/COLOR

OK, I was going to stay away from AccyWeb

You’re not the only one. I had no intention of posting in this thread or on the forum boards of accyweb again, so last night I didn’t appreciate being dragged into it yet again. I only came into thread to try and explain it from slinkys point of view. Between Gary, yourself and a lovely bit of editing to one of my posts (which, for the record, was in no way any reference to your weight, it was an answer to the numerous references Gary had made to you in an earlier post), we’ve been made to look like we have a problem with large people.


Willow I can see you’ve got a very painful issue with your weight, but this thread was never about you. How you’ve managed to take it personally only you know. No were did I see slinky reference YOU as being over weight. You really need to sit back and have a think about this Willow, was it comments made by slinky that you have taken personally yourself or has Gary managed to make you believe it was aimed at you, being, as you say the only large lady to post in the thread? You’ve go to admit when he uses someone so blatantly in pain about a situation she has no control over, it doesn’t half strengthen his argument


As slinky has said, she has no issue with her weight, it just bugs the life out of her, as it does me, having to endure years of comments such as,” God aren’t you skinny” or “God your sister is skinny”. You say you would never make a comment like that Willow, no of course you wouldn’t, you know how it feels just in an opposite respect.


It’s a shame this conversation has to be had over a pc or you would see how sincere I am when I say this thread was not at aimed at you. As others have said, which I whole heartedly agree with, you are a wonderful person, why you feel the need to worry about your weight I don’t know. You’re just our Willow off accyweb. I hope one day, for yourself, you can find some personal peace with your size, as I can see how raw your feelings are.

Originally Posted by garinda

certainly wasn't present in some of the foul mouthed posts from the early hours of Sunday morning, that have since been deleted

People in glass houses Gary, your nasty little comments directed at my sister at the start of this thread were far from funny or polite. You never fail to surprise me the lengths you will go to when you’re backed into a corner. I hope you’re happy with the amount of people you’ve managed to upset in this thread! In fact, I know you will be! Feel free to exonerate yourself of any upset caused, I know you won’t have a problem doing so, at least that way it keeps your conscience clear.


Slinky still hasn’t had any pm’s from these women you say she’s supposedly upset by the way, fictitious, again to strengthen your argument? Yes probably.

[CASPER]

I said GROUP HUG folks!!!!!

There's not enough love in this thread

[WillowTheWhisp]

The reason why I personally have an issue with my weight is that being so much overweight as I am is a health problem just as being too much underweight is a health problem. Where the people in the TV program I watched have damaged their internal organs by dieting from naturally slim to unnaturally thin they have lost the weight intentionally. My problems are beginning to affect my health and I need to be able to find a solution to them or I have as much chance of dying from them as an annorexic has of starving herself to death, but I have not gained the weight intentionally, I have gained it as a by-product of trying to lose in order to fit better into bum hugging jeans. Trying to lose caused me to gain which then left other people (my doctor included) telling me I needed to lose weight for the sake of my health.

At one time I used to visit a gym 3 nights a week (before I had kids and had more time to myself) and although larger than all the other people there I was actually fitter than most and able to demonstrate to newcomers how to do some of the excercises, under the direction of the owner. The newbies were quite surprised that this podgy person was more agile and supple than they were but that was only because they hadn't had as much practice (or indeed any practice in some cases). At one point I trapped a nerve whilst at the gym - my own fault for not doing what I always told other people to make sure they did carefully - and I ended up having to see a chiropractor. He, like my doctor, told me I needed to lose weight and made the flippant remark that of course eating less would solve it because you didn't see any fat people coming out of Belsen. My response to that was that you didn't see any healthy people coming out of Belsen either.

Both you Tinkerbelle and Slinky have obviously, from what you've said, had nasty cutting remarks made about you which are totally unjustified and I can appreciate your anger at the people who directed those nasty remarks to you and made stupid suggestions that you need to eat when you already do eat. Be angry with those idiots by all means but why be angry with people who did not direct any insults to either of you? You are healthy and slim and not dieting due to some ill-conceived notion that you need to lose weight (as unfortunately many young girls do when they see these impossible role models); it's the people who tell you that you need to gain who are idiots who don't know what they are talking about. Their ignorance in saying the things they have said to you is pathetic and probably more to be pitied than anythng. You are obviously the right healthy weight for who you are and that isn't in dispute. I don't see where it ever has been.

However, when my weight is causing me health problems as well as causing me to be on the receiving end of names like 'fat pig' or 'fat cow' it is something which I would dearly love to solve. If the name calling hurts you when you are healthy can you imagine how much more it hurts someone who is unhealthy? Can you imagine what it is like to take your kids to McDonalds on holiday and have some ignorant yobbo shout "Oi missus are you trying to make them as fat as you?"

If I was just slightly plump with no health problems and past caring about trying to fit into a pair of jeans that wouldn't zip up unless I laid flat on the bed and pulled my tummy in then I'd probably shrug off the insults and get on with life but it isn't the words like "fat" and "obese" (which is the medically accurate term for someone my size) which worry me - althopugh I don't like being called a cow or a pig - it is the fact that my health is suffering and yes to be perfectly honest I do think that a slim person looks far more attractive than an obese one. I can't imagine anyone would really honestly argue the opposite. I have to undergo an operation in the not too distant future and size is a major factor in whether or not I wll survive it. No doubt if I pop my clogs some ignorant fool like the ones who've taunted you two will say it's my own fault for being so fat - but as I won't be around to hear it I don't suppose it will matter to me by then. It might just upset my girls though.

How I managed to take the fat cow comments personally was when I saw the reference to a large person having posted in the thread and I was the only large person to have done so. As I said before, Gary and I had talked about other things - I had told him that I had inadvertantly got the wrong side of Gayle in her funding thread (but susequently she understood where I'd got the impression it was for arts projects as she was the one who posted that it was for talented artists) and the wrong side of you two in the custodial sentences thread (which is how it looked at the time) and I said I had better just keep out of AccyWeb discussions because I was getting everyone annoyed - or words to that effect. I also told him that I understood what he and Gayle were referring to about the models. Maybe it's just because we were on the same wavelength about not approving of the image the model industry presents due to one of his friends having died of annorexia and my friend's daughter being in danger of going the same way as she is naturally slim but dieting to get thinner.

[garinda]