Poor little skinny girl

I've been following the crappy arguments on the letter-to-the-editor page in the Metro. One of them is about those new Dove ads that I'm sure we've all seen. Personally, I don't think anyone wants to see that. I remember a specific day at the mall (by the way, malls are gross, trashy, and infested by middle schoolers) when my boyfriend screamed in horror, "Ahh!" at seeing a giant poster with a "robust" woman on it posing in her underwear.

I'm all for improving how women view themselves. I'm all for gunning down anorexic fashion models in skimpy underwear-like clothes. But these Dove ads. Yuck. Come on, we're used to seeing cute, skinny girls. They can't just drop this bomb on us. It's unfair and offensive (to our sight). Maybe they could ease us into it... kind of like boiling a frog.

The San Jose Mercury News puts it in good perspective:

Well, it was bound to happen. After we've spent years bemoaning advertising images of famished fashion models wearing size negative-2 jeans, one player in the beauty industry has decided to call our bluff. I refer to the Dove "real women" ads, featuring six curvy "civilians" posing in their undies.

Maybe you've seen the billboards around town and thought, "Wait, something's wrong. Where are the jutting cheekbones? Where are the protruding hipbones?" But the question is, did your reaction make you want to buy what Dove is selling?

A letter in the Metro was written by a woman complaining that the ads offended her because they claimed "real" women should be curvy, and that she is called "fake" because she is naturally skinny. First of all, I wonder if she is blind. At least one of the spokemodels for the new Dove campaign is a skinny blond girl. Second of all: Oh boo hoo hoo. You're skinny. How sad. You have a nice figure. Oh, I'm crying for you. What a shame people are calling you fake. That's so much worse than being obese with a billion health issues. No, really, I'm sobbing into my teddy bear as we speak.

A man promptly replied in support of that letter, declaring his hatred for fat people. Let me quote: "The next time someone calls you fake because you are skinny, tell them to go have another doughnut." Now, I don't exactly embrace fat people either, but that's just a dumbass thing to say. Obviously, not everyone was born to look like a freaking model. On the other hand, Americans are getting fatter than any healthy person would want to be. My suggestion (the best one, I think) is that this man can shove a doughnut up his ass.

What we're facing here is a weird state of extremes. Media is telling us to look like six foot tall skeletons while mainstream America has reached its peak in obesity. Maybe if we all had a little common sense, we wouldn't need lame-ass ads to tell us what to think.