Supermodels and Shrink-Wrapped Skeletons...

This will be uncharacteristically short and pithy, I promise.

Sherah (my sis-in-law) and I were flipping around on TV a night or so ago and came across some inane show (that's rather an oxymoron, isn't it?) in which some fashion designers were sitting around judging a gaggle of models based on how well they would showcase the designer's wares. The models were all about 18 and, for the most part, morose-looking. The designers sat in lowback chairs talking about the models, who were arranged on the floor in front of them, in a way that inescapably reminded me of old-south plantation owners judging slaves at auction. They critiqued body parts and weight, curves and posture, face structure, hair, eye-shape. None of them actually got up and inspected any of the models' teeth, but it seemed about to happen at any point. The models, for their part, stood turning vaguely back and forth, keeping their expressions blank, apparently trying very hard not to look like their self-images were being systematically carved up by the brutally "objective" observations of their languidly lolling judges.

And then one of the judges referred to one of the models, a particularly dessicated-looking girl with a surprisingly plain, though not unattractive, face, and informed the other designers that the model had lost 15 pounds in two weeks in order to fit the ideal of the panel. She said it as if she expected the others to applaud politely. The model she had referred to looked, to put it bluntly, like a shrink-wrapped skeleton. She looked literally emaciated. Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes were sunken and vaguely empty, and her body looked like something some enterprising survivalist would use to start a fire. And there she stood, having starved herself for two weeks to waste-off what precious little shape she'd had, probably listening to a hated voice in her head telling her "I'm FAT, I'm FAT, I'm FAT!", and believing every word of it.

Do I need to mention that this is just out-and-out sick?

Wind the years back to about 1999. I was living in Napoleon Ohio and working at a pizza joint whilst attending college. A waitress at this establishment, let's call her Emily, was a very attractive girl with a sweet disposition and an air of innocent naivete that was heartbreakingly endearing. She was, however, painfully thin.

It was typical, as the restaurant closed for the evening, for employees to have free dibs on leftover pizza from the buffet. We'd take home a few slices or even a whole pizza as a perk, since otherwise it'd simply go to the Dumpster out back. On one evening when there happened to be quite a bounty of leftovers, I mentioned to Emily that she should stock up a box for herself, as she occasionally did. "No," She said reluctantly, "I can't. I'm trying to lose some weight."

I am sure I blinked with speechless bewilderment. "Where?" I demanded. "From your hair?!"

She gave an embarrassed I've-said-too-much-already look and attempted to dismiss the subject. I persisted. I told her that, despite what the media implies, most men do not believe that skinnier is better. Only women believe that. To prove my point, I called the manager and two delivery drivers, all men, out of the kitchen area. With no preamble, I asked them if they preferred very thin women or women with a little more weight on them than Madison Avenue would deem appropriate. They all instantly answered that they preferred women with more "meat on their bones", as one of them put it. The equasion is simple, they explained (though not in these words): men are attracted to those details that make women different from men. Specifically, curves and "soft parts". The thinner a woman is, the less curves and, err, soft parts.

Of course, that is only true to a point. Too much weight tends to make the woman entirely "soft part", and the lack of any contrast tends to be less attractive.

All three men agreed with me (to Emily's hopefully instructive blushing) that she was, if anything, a might too thin and needn't be the least bit worried about partaking of some extra pizza.

I don't know whatever happened to Emily, but it is terribly apparent that she is not alone in the perception that men like girls skinny, and the skinnier the better. Almost without exception, I think any woman who actually asks the men she knows will find that, up to a point, the reverse is true. Skinny is the iron-clad mandate of the cannibalistic media and, indirectly, women themselves, who have determined that what the media says is beauty must be true.

So give yourselves a break, my beloved female friends. Eat a little more pizza. Ask the men you know what they actually think is beautiful and attractive. And believe them. There are far too many beautiful women going around sucked dry of all their confidence and physical self-respect because they've swallowed the impossible and ridiculous dream of freakish emaciation.

Can I hear from the men out there? Am I right? And women, what do you think?