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Government Should Ban Skinny Models To Curb Anorexia, Say Researchers
smoothjazz writes "Governments are justified to prevent very skinny models from walking the catwalk and ban photographs and advertisements suggesting that extreme thinness is attractive, according to a group of researchers who found that social and cultural environment influences on young women is largely responsible for the spread of chronic eating disorder."
Oh wait, researchers have freedom of speech. Come to think of it, so do marketing firms.
Banning skinny models definitely would help fix the problem. I'm normally against such type of regulation but when the common person is blasted in the face by constant advertising in every form imaginable 24/7 then i tend to fall on the side of regulation.
It's not like the average person can moderate the amount of advertising that rapes their eyeballs and subconcious every day.
Fat models, skinny controllers, dumb views...
Oh, wait, are we not talking about code all of a sudden? Okay, in that case, dumb, skinny models, and no fat chicks.
In fact, forget I was here.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
The social manifestation of the persecution of beauty.
You know, the thing about insurance of groups, which is essentially a statistical undertaking, is that there are always outliers in both directions, and they are accounted for. There are insured people who never go to the doctor or need medical treatment. And there are insured people who go every time someone *else* sniffles. Over a large population, it'll balance out just fine.
Whenever someone starts sniveling about the over-users, take a moment to remind them of me, someone who has been well insured for decades and hasn't *ever* made a health insurance claim -- I seem to have an immune system like a Sherman tank. So far, lol. 55 and counting, though, not too bad.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Okay.
I've got an eight-year-old girl. Every day I tell her that she's smart and strong and brave and beautiful, and that I love her, and that I'm proud of her. We've told her how they use computers to make models look different than in real life. (The Fotoshop by Adobé ad is great)
Yet for all the work we do to tell her how incredible and awesome she is, there's a constant barrage of ads screaming that she's ugly and dumb and girls are wimpy.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
The problem is not that these body images are harmful, but that girls are trained to think that their appearance is their most important attribute.
This is not improving, this shallow culture is being promoted to men and boys as well, perhaps in order to stave off charges of sexism, but more likely it's just a realisation within these cosmetic and fashion industries that they are missing out on a potential market.
... so who is winning?
You say what you do and you say what ads do but no conclusion unless we have to take the last phrase of your comment as you feel that's what she thinks.
I feel your pain but apparently parents have been worried for millennia about external influences on their children. If ads is the worst you've got then that's perhaps not too bad. You might like to compare your worries with parents in say the Syrian city of Homs.
Wait until she's around 12-15. You'll really have worries then as she becomes rapidly more sophisticated and "teen" ...
Best of luck (OK - enjoy every moment, even when you are shitting yourself with worry)
Cheers
Jon
My wife is anorexic. She's stable, and she's become a successful practicing MD. Understanding the problem doesn't cure it.
She grew up in a home with two half-sisters under a frequently single mother who went through many marriages. Her (now also anorexic) mother has career success, ridiculously low self esteem, and she married at least two physically abusive men. The worst of them was a churchgoing man who physically abused all his daughters/stepdaughters and repeatedly raped his own daughter (thankfully my wife did not endure that). He hid it from his wife/my mother-in-law and everyone else (except the girls) for several years. When my mother-in-law finally understood it was happening, she divorced him as soon as she felt she could without physical abuse as a repercussion. I don't think that was right away. And because of fear, he was never reported or punished. I don't think he even quit attending church.
My wife had no control of her life in her childhood. She could control her appearance. She became anorexic to give fulfill her need for a sense of control in her life.
Banning the ads would help reduce the draw of that manifestation of the need for control. But the root problem is very commonly associated with domestic abuse and/or unhealthy childhoods like the one my wife grew up in.
For example, they may be skinny because the government is spending on healthcare rather than spending on hunger.
Ah, no. Just No.
Anorexia is a mental illnesses, not a poverty issue.
Poor people in the USA aren't wasting away from lack of food.
The majority of them are too fat, because they can only afford cheap fattening foods, and filling a belly of a hungry child is more important than filling it with a weight conscious diet.
This has NOTHING to do with Anorexia which hunger or poverty.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Where I live that theory is a fact, even with commercial healthcare costing only $50 a month. I live in the UK, that figure is through BUPA. I probably pay $600 dollars roughly in National Insurance contributions. I just finished an MA and now work part time. I paid even less during Uni, did you?
As to the second part of your post, the Scandinavians prove you wrong on the corruption front. Norway especially, is considered the least corrupted nation on the planet, followed closely by her neighbours and New Zealand.
Give me more government I say (when it's good), lucky the majority of the best ones are in Europe or part of the Commonwealth.
Jonathanjk.com
This blows all the mods I've made, but the shear ignorance here is killing me. People need to get past their misogynist thinking that anorexia just means being lean.
The reason curbing anorexia is a big deal is that it has "the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder" and it's a highly cultural phenomenon, extremely rare in societies before modern advertising. Even with treatment, the prognosis is death most of the time. This is an avoidable danger, like prohibiting the glorification of drugs in kids' shows.
Really... How would regulating this be any different than banning steroids in professional sports?
Ask me about my sig!
No, men aren't off the line either...but from looking on a daily basis at typical people in the US any time I go out.....skinny models causing anorexia is NOT a problem....I can't remember the last time I saw anyone, particularly a chick that looked anywhere or any way too skinny....
Hell, its hard to find anyone out there that looks anywhere close to 'fit'....
I was that way...at least I'm trying with better diet, proper portions...and yes...exercise.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
...it is still better than a government run system, as I at least have choices of carriers and coverage.
Have you ever lived under a government-run healthcare system?
I'm from the US, and I've lived in Japan for years at a stretch. In Virginia, Kaiser Permanente listened to my wife's explanation of her symptoms (chronic sinusitis, excessive post-nasal-drip, resulting digestive issues, among other issues) and decided that the trouble in her gut was actually evidence that she needed her ovaries removed. Um, no.
In Tokyo, the local hospital (as part of the government-run healthcare system) listened to her symptoms, and then also to her lungs, and said "hey, you have light asthma -- here's how you manage it." Problems (mostly) solved.
Just because a healthcare system is government run doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. Just because a healthcare system is left to run on market dynamics and choices doesn't mean that it's necessarily better.
FWIW, the opposite is also true -- we've also experienced crappy medical care in Japan, and good care in the US. Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to the quality of the doctors themselves.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Three that I know off the top of my head:
Cost per capita (The U.S spends on average, double what Western nations with socialized systems spend)
Infant mortality rate (The U.S. ranks 34, right behind Cuba)
Life expectancy (The U.S. is again in the 30s and again behind communist Cuba)
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Many people anecdotally agree. Your hospitals in the US are sometimes more lavish than hotels. Who the hell isn't going to say the care is better there?
In canada you get what you need to live. Which is the important bit. The living.
The climate is REALLY fucking reaching because we have a much harsher climate and have many many more people per capita die to exposure than you do.
The demographics and lifestyles are very very very similar. Go to Ontario, then go nearly anywhere in the northeastern US. You can't really tell much difference.
I already mentioned that some Canadians go to the US for treatment, and thats already largely explained. A population that is over 10x ours has a larger need for rarer treatments, thus has more facilities better equipped to deal with it. Its generally a 4-6 hour or less flight to get there. Why would they open a specialized clinic for it here?
As far as correlation =/= causation, its a bullshit strawman in this case. Our lifestyles are slightly different because we are taught differently. Our health care, because its publicly funded, for the public good, deals a LOT in preventative treatment and education on how to avoid things.
Guess what? Preventative treatment and education are extremely effective and extremely cost effective. The fact that we're living longer while spending less than 1/5th of your per patient spending is plenty of evidence of that.
Our improved lifestyle is a direct result of these organizations. The school milk program, the Canada Food Guide that was released in the 60s and continues to this day... etc... all government funded, all related to or directly funded by our universal health care.
Try getting your fucking Insurance company to invest in education.
I apologize for being curt with you but I've had it with people like you touting the virtues of a system that is partially responsible for your country being on the verge of circling the drain for the last 5 years
You also fling communism around... communism isn't the answer, a socialist democracy on the other hand is fan-fucking-tastic. Ask us, or the Norwegians, or the Swedes... or any one of another dozen countries that are thriving in what are for america very troubled times, all thanks to our socialist systems.
I should also point out that at Americas most successful it was damned close to a socialist government anyways.
Like open heart surgeries etc?
Exactly like open heart surgeries.
Do you suppose the wealthiest Canadians needing a bypass put their name on the list and wait patiently... Or fly to Cleveland?
Do you suppose wealthy (elderly) Canadians in need of an organ transplant resign themselves to age-based rationing and just die quietly... Or pull a Steve Jobs and fly to Tennessee for a no-fuss, no-muss, no-waiting-list liver?
Or on the flip side of the equation, as a brilliant young surgeon, would you stay in Canada with its government-capped doctor's salaries... Or "defect" to your neighbor to the South where you can make 10x as much without the hassle of having to treat the masses of unwashed poor as a form of government-imposed forced charity?
You really aughtn't act so defensive about this - As I said, I do think you have the better public health care system, overall. At the upper end, though, of-the-wealthy, by-the-wealthy, and for-the-wealthy, sorry, the US has that market cornered. And I don't say that as a positive!
Or on the flip side of the equation, as a brilliant young surgeon, would you stay in Canada with its government-capped doctor's salaries... Or "defect" to your neighbor to the South where you can make 10x as much without the hassle of having to treat the masses of unwashed poor as a form of government-imposed forced charity?
I know a bit about that. I've talked to a lot of Canadian doctors, some of whom were good surgeons (the word "brilliant" is overused hype). Many of them went for training in the U.S. (just as many American doctors go for training in Canada).
Most of the best surgeons do want to stay in Canada. They like the idea of being able to treat their patients according to need, not according to whether they can pay for it. They feel that they got a free education, and they like the idea of giving something back to their country. They feel like they're part of their community. They like being Canadians, because, as Canadians say, "we care about each other." They like the idea of practicing scientifically-based medicine, which is very strong in Canada. They like the idea of contributing to medical research, publishing in American and international journals, and reporting their results at international conferences, which they do a lot.
When you talk about the "unwashed poor", you show that you really don't know what's going on. Canadian doctors (and most American doctors, for that matter) don't regard their patients as "unwashed poor." They regard them as people in need of care that they can help. Doctors often say that it is a "privilege" to practice medicine and help others.
Your fundamental problem is your ideological belief in the free market. It doesn't work in health care. Doctors get a comfortable salary, and for most of them it's enough. Greedy doctors give bad medical care. Financial incentives give bad medical care.