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Israel Passes Photoshop Law To Combat Anorexia
Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that the Israeli parliament has passed legislation that prohibits fashion media and advertising with models who fall below the World Health Organization's standard for malnutrition banning underweight models as determined by Body Mass Index. The new law also stipulates that any ad which uses airbrushing, computer editing, or any other form of Photoshop editing to create a slimmer model must clearly state that fact. Advertising campaigns created outside of Israel must comply with the legislation's standards in order to appear in Israel. 'I realized that only legislation can change the situation,' says Rachel Adato, an Israeli parliament member with a background in medicine. 'There was no time to educate so many people, and the change had be forced on the industry. There was no time to waste, so many girls were dieting to death.' The measure has been controversial within Israel for raising the question of where free speech bumps up against the fashion industry's responsibility — and its possible harm — to its customers' psychological well-being. Donald Downs, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and an expert on the First Amendment, says that it would be very tough to pass something like Israel's law in the US Congress. 'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
Semitic
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
As opposed to the necessary ones?
Why not? The government sees fit to utterly destroy Joe Public's privacy in the name of 'combatting terrorism', but they won't put a kink in the advertising industry's portrayal of an unobtainable ideal as a factual status quo? Who's running the US anyway? Oh, wait, silly me...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Good one, the US should go first though.
Those blonde shiksa with the skinny waists and the big boobs, Rachel, I can't keep my Baruch's eyes from wandering!
It would be hard to get passed in the US because we care more about a corporation's health than a citizen's. No other explanation is needed. In Israel, there is more respect for their citizens, probably due to the fact that every border they share is with a country that currently, or recently, has wanted them wiped off the face of the Earth.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've seen a paper about it: the most significant contributor to anorexia is social context, specially advertising. The fashion industry is, therefore, responsible for what they put on ads. I fail to see what's the issue here: it's common knowledge that "free speech" doesn't mean "free to say whatever you want". If they put an ad with underweight, photoshopped models, then they are harming everyone who's watching, in a medical sense, and must refrain from doing so.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Back in the glory days of super models a la Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks, from what CC said the typical size for a model was 6. Now, they're 0s and 2s. Some of them are downright repulsive. There's a pretty nasty pic of Gisele Bunchken post-pregnancy and it looks like she was trying to starve off the weight. Might as well drape the clothes over a wire hanger if that's what they're aiming for.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
What BMI range will be acceptable for models?
If you truly believe that BMI is an accurate measure of somebody's overall health, you have some learning to do. It's simply a ratio of a person's weight to their height. It does not take into account the fact that muscle mass is denser than fat mass, nor does it consider other factors like bone density (which can be an indicator of good health, even though it will increase your BMI).
This isn't about encouraging "fat fucks", this is about realizing that a size 0 is unhealthy, especially on a woman who's 5'11". Magazines have been promoting an impossible image of what the ideal woman actually looks like for decades, and any attempts at self-policing have largely failed. Photoshop just makes it worse, because they can take somebody who's actually really beautiful in real life, and make her "better"... It's airbrushing for the 21st century.
By the standards of the fashion industry, I'm morbidly obese... *gasp* she wears a size 12?!?! By any rational standard, however, my weight is exactly where it should be for a woman of my size. I'm fit and healthy, and that's all that matters. Women come in different shapes and sizes, and they need to promote that realism. It's a sad state of affairs that porn is the only place you can find realistically proportioned women in print, and that's because their buyers are usually interested in different... attributes....
They are no more "human" and entitled to human rights, then this building I'm sitting in. The people inside the building have a right to free speech, but not the building itself.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Exactly! Since the major problem of Palestinian-Israeli relations cannot be immediately solved, Israel should abandon all efforts to solve its domestic issues.
'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'
Isn't this the reason we have warnings on boxes of cigarettes?
Where is the hate in crazyjj's post? Where is the anti-semitism in his post? Why do you consider speaking out for the Palestinians as hate towards Jews?
'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
The US already has a law that "paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term". It is the FDA law that prohibits unsubstantiated medical claims because it might cause people to ignore treatments that actually work. The issue of under weight and Photoshoped images is that they cause people to attempt to attain that standard and cause health issues. This has been proven to happen.
>>>If you truly believe that BMI is an accurate measure of somebody's overall health, you have some learning to do
Let's suppose he's a doctor.
How much more learning does he need?
You still think you know more than the doctors in the WHO and AMA who publish these BMI figures?
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
These 'photoshop' regulations and proposals generally require some sort of written disclaimer if a model has been photoshopped. However, that seems like a very questionable assumption about how this stuff works...
Does anybody seriously suspect that advertisements prove compelling because we are deceived by them in some trivial 'I believe that this advertisement is a representative depiction of reality." sense that could be refuted simply by a textual disclaimer?
The idea that this is an information problem, caused by people just not knowing certain facts, seems about as naive(or deliberately toothless) as believing that you can make somebody stop gambling or buying lottery tickets with a dose of stats 101... It's nonsense. Do people advance these proposals because they actually do believe that? Or do they submit them because the alternative of banning photoshopping is just too dire; but Something Must Be Done?
Porn is for men, fashion mags are for women. Am I right?
As opposed to the necessary ones?
As opposed to nothing. They are all unnecessary.
But why only for women. There's also a problem with men in most magazines. Most of them look like they spend 16 hours a day in a gym and are probably on steroids. Should we start to legislate how much muscle men pictured in magazines can have. Because if we don't we might have too many young men experimenting with steroids.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I can't readily find any data just for Israel, but I find the law's author's assertion that "We also know that the first cause of death in the age group of 15-24 is anorexia" to be highly suspect. In the US, 46% of deaths ages 15-24 are accidents (33% motor vehicles), then there's homicide, suicide, cancer & other illnesses. Anorexia is nowhere near the top as a cause of death. Israelis have cars and murders and cancer just like Americans (ok, probably less cars & murders, but still); I find it hard to believe that their stats are terribly different.
The article itself says that mortality rates are 4% for anorexia, which is bad, but surely all the 10% with eating disorders she cites don't have anorexia?
238) Stop forcing Palestinians into walled-off ghettos.
There are plenty of "Palestinians" living outside Gaza in Israel. Nobody is "forcing" them to live in the ghetto that Gaza is.
So if I build a nice tall fence around your city/town, you'd freely and with pleasure either tolerate it or move away without feeling even the slightest bit forced?
I do realize that you were trolling, but I'm too drunk to ignore it.
this kinda laws is gonna save the world ROFL.....ya know all those abuses going on and corruption and this is what the media pushes around a bunch a spoiled rich broads that have eating issues.
I definitely know less than Doctor WHO.
Just another ignorant American.
FAIL. If seeing images of thin people makes people want to become thin, then seeing obese people would also make people want to become fat. Therefore, seeing up-close and being around actual obese people on a daily basis would have a far greater effect than the occasional view of a rail-thin model in an advertisement. You can't even hear or observe closely the thin image for it to seem to be a real person, it is more like a mannequin or drawing. Therefore, we need to ban obese people from public view. The number of obesity related health problems is well documented and "growing".
captcha: ice cream !
The irony in Palestinian Israeli relations is that they're *both* descended from the same people who once made up the Hebrew tribe in ancient Israel. Not that either would ever admit it. It's kind of a bizarre situation. It would be actually be funny, if they weren't killing and oppressing each other with such deadly seriousness.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
There's actually a rather direct connection between the obesity epidemic and the presentation of skeletally thin models as a standard of beauty. An awful lot of basically healthy teenage girls try to starve themselves into looking like models, inevitably fail (girls who become models are already naturally very thin, even before they start the starvation diets) and "rebound" and end up weighing more than they did before. (Starvation sets off all kinds of nasty reactions in the body, and one of the things it does is encourage the body to pack on as much fat as possible when food becomes plentiful again; this made sense for our ancestors, living in times of feast alternating with famine, but it's terrible in the modern world.) After a few cycles of this, they end up with deeply screwed up metabolisms and lifelong problems maintaining a healthy weight. I don't know how much of the modern obsesity problem is attributable to this phenomenon, but I'm guessing it's a non-trivial amount.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I am very pro first amendment, but the idea of disclaimers on impossibly obtainable body proportions sounds as good as those white rectangles on the cigarette boxes. Women, and to a lesser, but increasing amount, men, are getting severely programmed by all the fake crap we do to our mass media people of fiction. I don't know if this is an American thing, or not even a thing at all, maybe I'm just out in left field here, maybe it's generational, I have no pattern - point I am making is that lots of women seem really put off by their body image, and they dont care that members of the appropriate gender think they look fine, or great, or even perfect. They just want to drop 30% of their body weight, to anorexic levels, stab their fellow with a rib, I dunno what the end goal is man, I'm just sick of cute girls crabbing about a little belly or having real thighs. So sick of it. This is probably my most ranty, less focused slashdot post in a long while, so I'm sorry about that. It's super frustrating to tell someone they look really beautiful and have them gaze off into the distance, miserable they aren't a jpeg and unwilling to ever embrace themselves or enjoy life until that day. We should all be extremely grateful that there's no great way to apply these photoshop techniques to moving images, yet. We'll be even worse off when that happens.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Of course. Ban something because someone might get offended by it/take it seriously. I honestly don't want to ban/censor something just because it might make a minuscule portion of the population want to do something harmful.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Why would you ban something that's been scientifically proven to be beneficial?
No penis cancer for me, thank you.
So I think that's more like
561400593) Ban something regardless of the science involved proclaiming it's benefits.
It's like saying that they don't know what they're talking about.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
When you don't "use that word correctly", you are doing a lot more than using a wrong "naming convention". You are factually incorrect.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You know what they say - an anti-semite is someone who hates jews any more than is absolutely necessary.
But why only for women. There's also a problem with men in most magazines. Most of them look like they spend 16 hours a day in a gym and are probably on steroids. Should we start to legislate how much muscle men pictured in magazines can have. Because if we don't we might have too many young men experimenting with steroids.
Such proposals have been advanced, on roughly the same logic about body-image issues, sometimes explicitly mentioning steroids, sometimes not.
My impression is that they are a harder sell because they just don't have the same body count to work with. Unless you really go to town on the steroids, most of the things you would do in the pursuit of an impossible musculature are somewhere between 'actually healthy' and 'harmful, in the common-gym-injuries sense'. You won't actually get there, and you might still be filled with crippling self loathing; but nothing you could write a good human-interest story about. Overenthusiastic dieting, on the other hand, seems to provide a modest, but steady, stream of alarming and dramatic anecdotes.
So if I build a nice tall fence around your city/town, you'd freely and with pleasure either tolerate it or move away without feeling even the slightest bit forced
Gated communities are all the rage in the US now - people like them so much they even pay more for the privilege.
What if someone put out an advertisement about ice cream, and some insane person decided to kill themselves because of it!? Therefore, all advertisements should be banned because a minuscule portion of the population might decide to do something harmful because of them!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The same country which sexually mutilates nearly all of its male children has a law pushed through to kinda-maybe prevent underweight people from suffering from being underweight. What?
Its not much of a problem with models or the modeling industry (surely no company is stupid enough to flout their brand with a person so obviously unhealthy and unattractive) but it sure as hell is a problem with the advertising industry; plenty of brands are all too happy to push products in any way necessary, products that have the sole long term effect of causing debilitating obesity, heart disease, and myriad other health problems. Products that are no more enticing than a skinny model in jeans or a bra.
This is the irony: a few people die here and there (and a few others are made sick or disabled) because they saw a skinny jeans model or a skinny makeup model, but at a far far FAR higher rate are people negatively impacted (disabled, killed) by the likes of fast food, junk food, and the many other poor health choices that we are tempted with via advertising on a daily (if not hourly or minute by minute) basis. Do something about those? Of course not! That's freedom! But skinny and/or airbrushed models... We HAVE to hate them...
You're being intentionally dense. The problem is that all of the people presented in media as "beautiful" actually have bodies that would be unhealthy for the vast majority of the population (likely including most if not all of the models, especially after you count photoshopped images). The people you encounter in everyday life are generally not explicitly held up as examples of beauty.
I think you're going to have some trouble getting Jews to stop their ritual circumcision. Hey, it's part of their culture, and if they believe their god demands that skin be cut from a boy's penis as part of a religious ceremony, I don't think they're going to give up just because you say so, Stormwatch.
Some cultures stretch necks, some scarify the skin, some pull the earlobes using bones and some cut skin off the penises of boys. Human beings are weird, what can you say? When your god tells you to do something, you don't ask questions, I guess.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...mmmm....no, I think he does. One can be an anti-Semite, or one can be anti-Semitic, and they mean the same thing, essentially. It's commonly misspelled "Semetic", though, so maybe you're thinking of that.
Or you're thinking of the Semites, a Biblical term referring to the descendants of one of Noah's sons. Or you're thinking of the ethnic umbrella group, which refers to anyone who speaks a Semitic language, which is pretty much the entire Arabian peninsula since Arabic and Hebrew are the two most common. Amharic is in there, too, as well as a bunch of others. So, yes, in that sense it is ironic to say that someone criticizing the Israelis for their treatment of Palestinians is an anti-Semite.
However, in English, the term has been overwhelmingly used to refer to discrimination against Jews, so if you have a gripe with that, take it up with the late 19th century. Whether the claim of antisemitism is valid or not is another issue, but his use of the word is correct.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Generally speaking, communities in the U.S. usually build them by choice. It's actually pretty rare here to wake up one morning to find soldiers in your backyard building a 50-foot concrete wall around your house and city. And I'm not sure it would have a positive effect on your property value.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I don't know how much of the modern obsesity problem is attributable to this phenomenon, but I'm guessing it's a non-trivial amount.
It's certainly more than the amount to which people make themselves overweight via 800 calorie coffee drinks and 1,600 calorie "meals" of saturated fat and soy protein. Oh, wait, fast food and frappucinos have been around forever, whereas skinny people are a new thing, right?
Anecdote 1, meet anecdote 2.
I'll take the chance. Especially now that the HPV vaccine might work too.
It costs a lot of money to perform all of the unnecessary procedures. It should be banned since we aren't smart enough to choose not to do it to our kids.
Sure, a skinny model clearly pushes other people to starve until they rot. That is about as true as ads with over weight people advocate over eating and lack of exercise. Sure they do. But with anorexia it is a special circumstance. The poor don't get anorexia. Anorexia loves suburban females, often Jewish, and almost no one else. Seen any men with anorexia lately? How many black girls have anorexia? Now I know people just have to believe nonsense. Remember when the Center For Disease Control believed that HIV had gaydar and could spot a queer a mile away and climb right into their blood stream? Now my advice to Israel is that if you have young women so whacked out and blind dumb that they starve themselves to death that is one heck of a lot better than providing health care and therapy for a long life. Talk about a non starter. Let's all rush to keep spoiled teen girls from torturing their families until they drop dead.
'nuff said
Oddly enough I expect the unrealistic portrait to being thin=beautiful causes obesity. For a lot of people when they realize they cannot reach the level of beuity, they give up and let themselves go. A lot people are polarized in their thinking, if I can be thin, I might as well get use to being fat. Showing people of healthy weight will keep expectations at a good level, and they don't feel bad about not trying to get too thin.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So if I build a nice tall fence around your city/town, you'd freely and with pleasure either tolerate it or move away without feeling even the slightest bit forced?
That depends, are you sending women, children and men to try and blow up other other people in cafe's, bus stops, and shopping malls?
The wall did it's job, when was the last time there was a suicide bombing by the palestinians. And in other cases where the palestinians were sniping at israeli civilians again it did it's job, and very well.
Om, nomnomnom...
Someone who is actually fit, with more muscle and lean body mass, can actually show up as unhealthy when using BMI with the way we measure it.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This kind of thinking, laws that favor society as a whole over the individual reminds me of the zeroth law of robotics.
You don't understand. Put aside for a moment the implicit ridiculous comparison of circumcision to the mutilation committed against young women in Africa.
Think about communities where circumcision is most common:
Arabs
Americans (US)
Jews
By condemning circumcision as an evil practice, you get to condemn not only ALL of those troublesome Middle-Easterners, but also the United States in general! It's a pretty diversely targetted insult. But, it does seem a bit like pissing into the wind. ;-)
Riiiight, speaking out for the rights of the Palestinians is an "anti-Jewish" sentiment. I wonder, is speaking out for Jews during WWII an anti-"Arian" sentiment? Is speaking out for Tibetians an anti-Sino sentiment? Is speaking out for black South Africans during Apartheid an anti-Christian sentiment?
Woodstock "gimp!ing" the image be legal?
To be fair, the big problems with BMI (as you yourself point out) are on the high end. Especially with athletic people (muscle weighs more than fat), but also with people who have higher bone density, or other reasons that the weight more than they "should", but aren't really fat. On the low end, it's usually a pretty reasonable measure. If your BMI is too low it almost always indicates *some* kind of problem (anorexia, glandular issues, low bone density, whatever, something is making you weigh to little). It's also, even on the high end, a pretty good tool for averaging. Most people with "obese" BMIs are in fact obese. In any individual case, though it should be followed up with more info. Athletes are notoriously on the high end of the BMI scale, despite clearly not being obese.
I agree with the overall tone of your post though.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I think you should go talk to a Palestinian, preferably one whose land has been taken away from them as a result of things like the settlements and that apartheid wall Israel is building.
And it's not Israel that's the evil entity. It's the Israeli government. I imagine the Israelis on an individual level are generally pretty cool people.
And for the record, it is FUCKING DISGUSTING that people like you would try to suppress the debate about the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinians by throwing the word "anti-Semitic" around. You have no fucking clue what real anti-Semitism looks like, asshole. Shitheads like you are diluting the meaning of that phrase, rendering it useless for describing ACTUAL anti-Semites.
:(){
yes.. mommie dearest.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
Whereas in the US laws are passed on the effect they may have on contributors to those who are passing them.
I'm pretty libertarian, but I'm 100% OK with that requirement by itself. Labeling laws help consumers make informed decisions about their purchases, which is a basic requirement of a free market. For example, I fully support a store's right to sell ground beef containing "pink slime" as long as it's clearly labeled as such. Along those lines, let Israel require companies to state that their images do not depict genuine humans. I'd like to be able to show my daughter that I'm not just making this stuff up, that models in magazines really don't look like that in real life and aren't a reasonable standard to judge yourself by.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Yes. I, at least, am aware that weight increases as the cube of height, not the square. Consequently, BMI tends to give numbers that are too high for tall people, and too low for short people. As an extreme example, many professional basketball players would be considered "obese" based on their BMI numbers, but "normal weight" based on body-fat percentage.
(Actually, because of changing body shape, it's around the 2.7th power for humans, but 3 is a better approximation to that than 2.)
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Wish I had mod points. Most people have no idea that both people co-existed in relative harmony for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Not only that, there's some indication the "Palestinians" have converted their faith twice...once to Christianity during the Byzantine era, and then eventually to Muslim when the Ottomans took over...
Advertising is not free speech. We already have tons of laws about what can be said in advertisements. We have entire categories of products banned from advertising via various forms of media.
And, besides that, fuck push advertisers. They don't inform. They don't help. They play upon human psychology and insecurity to make people feel inferior if they don't have The Product. They try to associate themselves with warm, fuzzy feelings to make people feel good about The Product. They do not operate on a rational level. The sooner we're rid of them entirely the better.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
>>>If you truly believe that BMI is an accurate measure of somebody's overall health, you have some learning to do
Let's suppose he's a doctor.
How much more learning does he need?
You still think you know more than the doctors in the WHO and AMA who publish these BMI figures?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439
And this is your BMI...
This is the information age. Maybe we should let people who can't effectively process information just die out.
Quite possibly. I have a number of doctor friends and they'll say straight out that there is LOT of medical information they simply parrot because it's "common knowledge". They are honest enough to say that when they are asked about something outside their specialties. Being a doctor even in a large orginazation doesn't make then right.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
..is not at all opposed to U.S. law saying that advertisments with edited or modified depictions of models should dislose that fact, and plainly enough to be easily seen and understood.
The fashion industry pretty much depends on peddling fantasy, from the fantasy that what you wear will improve your life in any way, from the superficial to the profound, and shouldn't be too offended that we ask them to admit that.
Of course they won't like it, since that may break the spell, but hey - you abuse the magic, it comes back at ya.
So how do we institute ANY 'truth in advertising'? Seriously, the concept is pretty much nonfunctional. We regularly see ads promoting some supplement with the facetious disclaimer that it is not intended as a treatment for anything, despite the ad plainly stating that if you want to improve|enhance|support your immune|sexual|youth|whatever function, 'use this'.
Seriously? We wanna do that? Wow.
Israel, on the other hand, is free to do what they want. Their country.
ps - Any stats on how many girls are starving themselves to death in response to these altered pics in ads?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This might not be the typical Slashdot comment. I post it anyway because anorexia was part of my live for many years.
My daughter has had anorexia. As a dad I watched my daughter identify herself with wrong and manipulated social standards (mainly fashion / beauty magazines) For her the images of her idols were reality. Nothing could change her mind. Over a period of 2-3 years she gradually slided down into anorexia. As a parent we tried to help and we sought professional help but mostly in vain. She only became more careful with exposing her 'behavior'. Unfortunately the switch only came after she reached 81.5 pounds (37kg) and was hospitalized for over 8 weeks. Specialists say that a few pounds less and she would not have survived it .
How do you explain to an 15 year old that everything she reads about her idols is manipulated / orchestrated? Warning messages in beauty and fashion magazines seem like a good effort to me. I consider myself liberal, normally I am against (government) control and over legislation. Normally I would immediately condemn such a legislation. But I also don't want any parent to experience what we experienced. Don't make the mistake that it can not happen to you. We are a normal family, no family history of drugs or mental disorders. We are realistic, we all enjoyed higher education. And still anorexia was a harsh reality for us.
Lucky my daughter got better. She is now back on a 'normal weight' but her fight is far from over. >5 years after she is still selective in what she eats, she still counts her calorie intake. But she can now place what happened to her and detect warning signals herself. Next September she will start her final year at university.
I was waiting for some retard to bitch about BMI. Thanks, Cayenne8, for being that retard! BMI isn't a useful metric if you're very muscular, Film At 11!
And what if you can't tell if you're fit enough that BMI isn't applicable to you? Good news! You're probably not fit enough to have to worry about BMI not being applicable to you!
Pseudoscience, you mean. Circumcision is not connected with cancer prevention at all. On the other hand, this is a procedure that destroys half the penile skin (it is double-layered, keep in mind), and more precisely its most erotically sensitive bits , so it's no surprise that it is clearly linked to erectile dysfunction . Oh, how about over a hundred baby deaths , every year, in the USA alone, or life-lasting psychological effects ?
As a mutilated man, I'd fully support a return to Hadrian's law: a total ban, under penalty of death. Stern, but fair!
Circumcision is child abuse.
And here I was thinking that "Photoshop Law" meant they would photoshop too-thin models to make them look a little healthier. Then I went and RTFS and spoiled everything...
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
I dunno how bad the obesity thing is in Israel vs the US, but over here...I don't think having girls (and guys) seeing non-obese models as something to try to emulate as being a bad thing.
What normal guy wouldn't want to be getting some from a Victoria Secrets model?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I guess it all depends on how you say doesn't it?
Saying that Palestinians "should not be kept walled into ghettos" is suggesting that they are, which is would be a reprehensible practice reminiscent of the Warsaw ghettos during WWII. Since they are not, then the statement is a defamation of Israel, which is, for all practical matters, is antisemitic.
As the post directly above yours shows, there is a definite streak of antisemitism on Slashdot.
There should be no Free Speech for non-humans. A corporation does not have any political or human rights necessities for Free Speech because a) all the humans that make up the corporation already have that right and b) it isn't human, so human rights don't apply.
I understand the line needs to be defined and corporations will circumvent the issue by paying people to make their speech for them - but the law is pretty good at wiping the floor with people too obviously circumventing it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Hmm...I guess it does help battle premature ejaculation problems tho, if it cuts down a bit on the sensitivity, eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think it will be an OK tradeoff to restrict a handful of female bodybuilders from modeling in order to save a few lives from anorexic starvation.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Put aside for a moment the implicit ridiculous comparison of circumcision to the mutilation committed against young women in Africa.
Why is it ridiculous? You can argue the degree of the damage, but the principle is exactly the same.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Lack of circumcision - Circumcision during infancy or in childhood provides partial protection against penile cancer, but this is not the case when performed in adulthood.[12] It has been suggested that the reduction in risk may be due to reduced risk of phimosis;[12][10] other possible mechanisms include reduction in risk of smegma and HPV infection.[10] Several authors have proposed circumcision as a possible strategy for penile cancer prevention;[13][14][15] however, the American Cancer Society point to the rarity of the disease and note that neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the Canadian Academy of Pediatrics recommend routine neonatal circumcision
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
wanna know who are the #1 murdering anti-Semites are in the whole world for the last 40 years? the Israelis, the Palestinians are Semitic people, same with the Lebanese, the Arabs, all those indiginous peoples living in that part of the world are Semitic peoples and the israelis are from europe & and the Ukraine, mostly, from an agnostic point of view it sounds criminally insane if someone comes up to you and says: "God said this is our land and we have a right to kill and kick anyone off of it we want" they would sound like they belong in prison for the rest of their life.
"The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term."
You mean like, say, asbestos?
I've seen you post a lot lately, and honestly, you're either one of the worst trolls or one of the stupidest people slashdot has seen in recent history.
I guess it's something to be proud of, eh?
But why only for women. There's also a problem with men in most magazines. Most of them look like they spend 16 hours a day in a gym and are probably on steroids. Should we start to legislate how much muscle men pictured in magazines can have. Because if we don't we might have too many young men experimenting with steroids.
Society places an exponential weight on how a woman looks versus how a man looks. Little girls are being indoctrinated with the idea that "thin, and nothing else, is sexy" from a very early age, and feel shamed for not meeting those standards.
Boys, on the other hand, do not. They are indoctrinated with other messages, like competition and winning, and are given pro athletes to idolize and want to be.
It's also a negative influence, but at least athletes are actually performing the acts they do in the games. No one will argue that boys playing sports is bad for their health (even though it could be, look at how many kids are injured in organized school sports), but girls starving themselves for an ideal only made possible by photoshopping is much more harmful.
More Twoson than Cupertino
A large variety of easily accessible methods like SSRI antidepressants, numbing agents, etc, will solve that problem in a much more reversible fashion.
Nope. I heard circumcision may even cause premature ejaculation, as you have less "feedback", meaning less control... also, circumcision increases attrition in sex, making it less pleasant for women as well, even painful. I even read some testimonials from females (not sure how legit these are) who wondered how any woman could tolerate living with a cut man.
Circumcision is child abuse.
"As the post directly above yours shows, there is a definite streak of antisemitism on Slashdot."
No: It shows misery loves company. Miserable people seek out other miserable people in order to make more miserable people.
But, feel free to keep up the persecution complex while you actively seek to provoke people into "wronging" you to justify your own anti-social behavior.
If your "community" made a habit of blowing up innocent women and children, then I expect that would wake to find soldiers build a fence in your back yard.
Since they are not,
ORLY? http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/23/6115591-palestinian-house-inside-cage-in-jewish-settlement?lite
I think it would be reasonable to regulate both extremes since there is clear evidence of problems at both ends of the spectrum. But it isn't necessary to regulate the other extreme since there just isn't much in the way of publication there.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
his use of the word is correct.
Except that Palestinians are Semitic too, so decrying their poor treatment is hardly 'anti-Semitic'...
...models in magazines
Wait: what are these "magazines" of which you speak? Are the "models" radio controlled, or autonomous, like quadrotors?
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
You're on the wrong side of the scale, mate. You're talking about weight lifters and athletes who register as false-positives for obesity.
The article is about people coming in UNDER weight, and I've never seen any false-positives on that end. Using myself as an example (I'm 6'2") I would have to weigh less than 140lbs to register as "underweight." My GF standing 5'3" would be in double-digits to fail the criteria.
For any metric lovers: at 1.9m, I would have to weigh 63kg or more to pass this criteria. A 1.6m person would need a mere 47kg. TFA doesn't say anything about upper limits on the BMI
This signature is false.
Will be interesting to monitor print ads in Israel going forward. Most models are 5'9" or 5'10". I order to meet the 18.5 BMI requirement a 5'10" model would need to weigh 129 lb. This guy has some stats on how much various female celebrities (some of whom are models; no idea whether his data is accurate) weigh. He lists 5'10" Adriana Lima at 112 lb.
If the corporation is just a group of people, then it should be the individual people that have freedom of speech, not the corporation.
If the corporation as a whole is considered a legal entity, then if it is found to do harm it should be subject to similar penalties as people. If an individual would be put in jail for a similar offence, the corporation should be legally prevented from doing business for a similar period of time--and maybe the corporate officers should have to take turns being in jail.
In other words, if you pool your resources to gain the legal benefits of incorporation, you should have to share any legal penalties as well.
They're not advertising the model, so truth in advertising doesn't apply. There was a case where a mascara company got in trouble for photoshopping, but it was because they artificially enhanced the model's eyelashes, basically making it look like their product was better than it actually was.
When I was 16-24 I was 5' 7.5" and weighed 110 lbs. That is bone skinny. Try as might, couldn't eat my way to gain weight. I did gain some lifting weights.
So, someone comes along and says to me: because you are naturally skinny you can't have employment in a particular field as a model?
Should Jim Parson's not be allowed to star as Sheldon Cooper?
So by age 30 I was onto the gaining a few pounds a year, and at age 60 I am now obese. That disqualifies me from a lot.
Blah.
So, if you are naturally a genius (I'm not, with an IQ only in the 130 range...) should you disqualified from working as a physicist or MD because the normal kids and sub-genius feel bad?
Sound like a case of comparative self-esteem. An oxymoron if I heard of one.
...Not sure if troll...
I really hope you're joking. I mean, first of all, this doesn't ban skinny models. It just bans anorexic ones. You know, the ones that convince girls that they need to literally diet themselves to death?
But it sounds like you don't mind having that on your conscience, as long as you get to screw a model. Way to have your priorities straight.
The new law also stipulates that any ad which uses airbrushing, computer editing, or any other form of Photoshop editing to create a slimmer model must clearly state that fact.
Since airbrushing and/or computer editing will be SOP for any ad, and since it is going to be impossible to determine if this makes the model appear thinner, then we can predict likely outcomes:
1) All ads will start to contain the disclaimer. Especially far shots as lots of people look thinner from a distance. Blurry shots too (some blurry people in the background, they might look thinner or just fuzzier - why let a jury decide your fate? disclaim!). The disclaimer will be so common, it won't be noticed anymore. Expect to see it on pics of chubby babies too. That'll be worth a laugh.
2) If not 1), modeling agencies will demand thinner models. It will NOT encourage healthier models who can no longer have any perceived shortcomings fixed.
Semite means "children of Abraham" last I checked. Which BTW, includes both the Arabs and the Isrealites. If someone wants to use words right, they should look them up first. Every time I hear "anti semite" meaning "anti jewish" I just have to chuckle.
Apartheid, apartheid, apartheid, settlements, settlements, settlements.
interesting.
All throughout Arabia, Shiite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims, nobody cares.
Sunni Muslims kill Shiite Muslims, nobody cars.
But if an Israeli kills a Palestinian - Apartheid, apartheid, apartheid.
Border disputes are border disputes all across the world. But if one party of a border dispute is Israel, it's occupation, settlement, apartheid racist.
An awful lot of advertising is peddling fantasy. Look at the beer ads, or the Axe commercials, or the ads for shaving products.
As far as "truth in advertising", you could start by requiring that any claims in the advertisement (spoken or written, explicit or implied to a reasonable person) must be supportable with documentation available on request. Any ads found to contravene this would be banned and significant penalties applied. Make it easy for people to complain about violations, give it real teeth.
If some place claims, "we've got the most experienced staff in the business", they'd better be able to document relevent career experience for all their employees as well as all the employees of their competitors. If they say "the best burger in town" they should be able to back it up with independent polling.
If you talk to anyone who is actually knowledgeable about BMI, you will learn that BMI is a terrible way to determine if a particular individual is a healthy weight or not. BMI is designed to determine whether or not a population is a healthy weight and as a shortcut for that it works reasonably well. BMI is a measure that was not designed to evaluate an individuals health. For example, when I graduated college I had a BMI of just over 30, which is considered obese, yet I had a body fat percentage of 4%, which is generally considered unhealthily low.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Do you lift heavy weights? Have you done so for years? Unless you have, you are part of the 98% of people for whom BMI is a valid measure.
Morbidly obese implies that (say) a 5'5" woman weighs at least 210 pounds. I am 6'5" and I weigh less than 210 pounds. I've done powerlifting tournaments, frankly I'm very muscular and have lifted heavy weights for years and surely have dense bones from weightlifting. And I'm not particularly skinny, just sort of normal (for California). Just the thought of my weight on a woman being "normal" is ridiculous.
Sorry but there is no way that you are anything but extremely overweight. Absolutely you should weight less. Even if BMI isn't perfect, it serves a purpose as a pretty good objectification of something that people take emotional issue with. Claiming that you must be an outlier isn't the solution.
No hating.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Starvation has been around forever, yes. Deliberate starvation as a lifestyle among large numbers of adolescents and young adults ... not so much. "Diet rebound" or "weight loss rebound" is hardly anecdotal; it's a subject of considerable study. Look it up.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's like saying that they don't know what they're talking about.
No, it's like saying you disagree with their word use. Because that is actually what are you doing.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
For certain definitions of anti-semitic, yes. On a related note, I bet you and crazyjj don't know the strict definition of semitic, either. Hint: it's strict definition doesn't mean Judaism or jews. And since words have evolving meanings, why declare your definition better in the context of his comments when his works just as well? (It's fitting that we're arguing semantics related to religious beliefs...)
When you don't "use that word correctly", you are doing a lot more than using a wrong "naming convention". You are factually incorrect.
I disagree. If I say "the car drove down the street" I am using the wrong word; the car "was driven" down the street by someone else (unless it's an autonomous car!). Still, you got my meaning and the world kept spinning. Unless the car didn't drive down the street at all, in which case we disagree factually and you should argue the facts, not my word choice. And if you disagree with the facts and not the words, why not just say that in the first place?
You can never assert that "that word doesn't mean what you think it means" because a person can use a word to mean whatever they want, the same as I can name a variable to mean whatever you want. You can only say "I didn't use that word to mean that" because only you can control your intended meaning.
Donald Downs, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and an expert on the First Amendment, says that it would be very tough to pass something like Israel's law in the US Congress. 'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
Who gives a fuck what the US congress would do? Last time I checked Israel had its own constitution and its own parliament, and it's not a US state no matter how some politicians try to act as if it is. Other countries choose to do things differently than the USA and we're surprised?
Hell there's plenty of laws that get passed in the USA that wouldn't stand a chance in Europe (death penalty, discrimination against gays, letting any eejit carry a gun etc.) but I don't see every post on American politics turn into a big discussion among Europeans about whether or not they approve. And somehow I don't think USAians would pay much heed to what the outside world thinks anyway. Why get hung up about what a sovereign democratic government decides to do inside its own borders? So in Europe and in Israel people have a different approach to free speech. So what?
One man's freedom of speech can have the power to deprive another man of his right to life. If the North American continent had been devastated by global war at the behest of a movement that abused its "freedom of speech" in the 1930s (as happened in Germany) then maybe the "all speech must be free regardless of the consequences" mantra would be a bit less of a convincing argument in the USA too.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Because they didn't coexist in harmony. The Palestinians were the Arab equivalent of poor white farmers in the American South. Religious hatred was stoked among them so that the minorities of Jews, Christians and other non-Arab-Muslims (of whom the Palestinian Arab-Muslims are direct cousins, to the point of some of their older houses having empty spaces in the doorways for a Judaic doorpost-marker, the mezuzah) could be kept oppressed.
To each their own. I'd prefer seeing shapely or even fat chicks far, far rather than the anorexic, skin and bones models that are prevalent nowadays.
Let's see, in Palestine homosexuality is punishable by death. In Jordan selling land to a Jew is punishable by death.
Yup, you're right, it's the Israeli government that is the only evil entity in the region.
Yes! I hate all those actual anti-Semites! After what the Romans did to Carthage, you've got feel bed for those semites.
Are they allowed to have unhealthy overweight women?
Great! One more thing I can approximate using powers of e.
Please don't paint me as one of the people for whom this is a hot button issue, but circumcision is on the wane in the US, for what it's worth.
And to me that seems reasonable, because the arguments presented for the practice culturally and by the medical world in the united states in the earlier half of the century don't seem to really hold much water.
-josh
And yet Israel still treats their Palestinian neighbors better than most of the nearby contries treat their Palestinian refuge camps. Naturally, the same people who blame the former on "teh Evil Jews" also blame the latter on "teh Evil Jews" (as well as the national debt, the behavior of Hollywood, and price of gas ,.....).
It's anti-semitic in the sense that it's usually mentioned as part of some larger anti-semitic rant.
On the other half of your comment - if Palestinians were launching rockets at my neighborhood school, I would have been vigorously advocating a Carthaginian peace myself, so I can only admire Israel's restraint in the circumstances.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
But why only for women.
Same reason as always: male legislators are best equipped to determine what's good for women. The dainty little things can hardly be expected to think for themselves, now, can they? I mean, look at the obsession with shoes! You'll never catch a strong, independent male buying stuff just because of advertising - much too smart for that. The women, though, need to be protected.
That would be interesting, if any of it were even remotely true.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic
Sure it's not antisemetic, but it's sure the hell not a walled ghetto. The majority of them live better than everyone else in the region unless they're rich, or royalty. And some of them live better than the Israeli's that they keep trying to kill.
Om, nomnomnom...
That's not exactly giving the whole story. The Arabs who make up the Palestinian ethnicity today are either Bedouins/Arabs who came from various places after the fall of the Ottoman empire, and not from the ancient Hebrew Tribe, or have genetic links to the Jews because some segments of the population were Jews who were forcibly converted many years ago.
It's like saying since we're both in America, we're descended from the same people who settled plymouth rock or the founding fathers. I know people who are, but my ancestors didn't.
Well for the past 1300 years, Palestinian wasn't an identity. They were just Arabs part of the greater Arab caliphate. As late as 1947, Palestinian in the region referred to the Jews. Later on, many native Jews and Christians were forcibly converted, but the majority of the Palestinian population is just regular style Arabs who streamed in the same time as the Jews since it was mostly a desolate wasteland with a few small cities before.
As for harmony, well that's a big stretch since they never truly lived harmoniously (that's a rather modern concept), though they have had periods of living side by side with minimal negative interaction.
One house does not a ghetto make. It makes a fenced-off house. Not trying to defend this instance; just pointing out that it's not a relevant example. Do you have anymore?
FAT CHICKS RULE!
From John Harvey Kellogg (yes, the cornflakes Kellogg), who also advocated pouring carbolic acid on the clitorises of girls caught masturbating: "A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg#Views_on_sexuality ) For those who may not know, the foreskin, which is in approximately 20% of cases entirely removed (including the frenulum and frenular delta, a commonly-recognized specific erogenous zone which most cut men retain to some extent) has the sensitivity akin to that of the lips. The beginnings of the practice in the U.S. were thoroughly unscientific, as is its continuation. It should be thoroughly illegal, but delusion will continue to prevail for decades, as more children are mutilated.
I thought the fence was in the West Bank, not Gaza?
Clever signature text goes here.
Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic.
Not at all. But insisting that debate be carried seriously with the other side that is unable to admit that Israel has a right to exist in some form as a country... that just may be antisemitic.
Before I negotiate with anyone about anything I tend to require that they admit my general right to exist with no concessions on my part.
What walled-off ghettos are you referring to?
Clever signature text goes here.
"I imagine the Israelis on an individual level are generally pretty cool people."
No, no they are not. As someone who has worked in the tourism industry for 10 years in New Zealand I can safely say that are the most rude, tight fisted, obnoxious travellers on the planet.
As someone non-Jewish living in the USA who has traveled to many countries including New Zealand, I can safely say that what you are describing fits a large number of tourists to any country from any ethnic/religious/political group. Travelers, particularly long-haul global travelers, tend to be very cost-conscious and emotionally guarded when in far off countries. You really don't know the local culture at all, you don't know what's safe, what's a fair price, who to trust, what the various laws are. To judge an entire ethnicity by the way some people of that ethinicity behave while in the quite unique social situation of being on a holiday that is no doubt costing at least $3,000 per person, is a clear case of you looking to justify something you already believed.
Also, as someone who ended up sharing time on a small boat in southeast Asia with a young Israeli couple I had never met before, I found them quite charming and easy-going conversationalists.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
No, it bans skinny models. Some women are in fact abnormally skinny. That's why people pay to look at them, and not just ask their sister to pose
It may be of benefit to poor Africans without adequate health care, or people with poor hygiene or many sex partners, where the risk from the procedure may be balanced by some small preventative effect. In the West, with good health care, good hygiene, and (now) HPV vaccines, it is a pointless and needlessly risky procedure.
You're looking at the wrong end of the height scale. Someone who's 4'6" would be considered "underweight" at 76 pounds, which is actually a healthy weight for someone that short.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Nonsense. Cutting the heads off the tallest poppies does not make the grass bloom.
It's like saying that they don't know what they're talking about.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
When you don't "use that word correctly", you are doing a lot more than using a wrong "naming convention". You are factually incorrect.
You're saying he's being anti-semantic?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
It's hard to have a conversation about Israel when so many people are completely unfamiliar with Zionism.
Especially when they confuse and conflate anti-zionism and anti-semitism.
Zionism is the reason Jews pushed for land in Palestine and why, after the British agreed to give them part of Palestine,
they've been continuing to push settlements into the Palestinian territories.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Um, actually the problem is that thin people are presented as being beautiful and fat people are presented as being ugly. It's the business theory behind any weight-loss program or fitness centre. That's why seeing obese people doesn't make you want to become fat.
We've gone so long with that frame of advertising that obese people are now fighting back and saying that fat isn't ugly. So, over time whenever fat returns to being the ideal of beauty again, we'll have a new generation of teens killing themselves by overeating so that they can be beautiful just like the models they see everywhere.
Really, the biggest problem isn't the models themselves, although anorexic models should be forced into treatment because it is truly a slow suicide. It's the photoshop part that's the problem. At least anorexic models show that it's physically possible to meet that standard, for a small percentage of the population at least. Photoshop bypasses any physical requirements and allows the models to remain healthy while portraying them as anorexics to the children that want to be just like them.
To that end, the 1st amendment doesn't apply. Truth in Advertising laws are constitutionally valid, already exist, and are necessary because it prevents people from selling you "Not Poison" ice cream that isn't even ice cream.
What walled-off ghettos are you referring to?
Gaza and the West Bank? Lots of Palestinians have jobs in Israel, considering there's no industry in Gaza and the West Bank, but getting to them means pretty much going from Mexico to the US, with the Israelis shutting down the border any time they feel threatened.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Correlation is hardly a "direct connection". Girls are coming out of elementary school obese, and it's not because they are trying to look like their favorite haute couture models. It's because of shit food, and a culture that coddles girls and accepts them for "how they are" and their "inner beauty". In times when moms cooked, fashion demanded tiny waists, and neurosis was still a disease, girls had fewer problems maintaining their figure.
Jew = follower of Judaism
Christian = follower of Christianity
Muslim = follower of Islam
Yeah, don't ask me why they chose that naming convention, but that's the way it is, so that last sentence should be
...and then eventually to Islam when the Ottomans took over...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Fat women don't sell clothes because fat women don't get raped. One can down a bulk loader's amount of Viagra®. However, once that $STEREOTYPICAL_OPERATIC_FEMALE_VOCALIST comes into view, instant penile implosion and testicular atrophy--Eeeeeeeyyyyyyaaaarrrrrrooooouuuuuun!
I know that not reading the article before commenting on it is a fine /. tradition, but you could try actually reading my comment before replying to it. Just a thought.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Palestinians had there land stolen, and are being racially, ideologically discriminated against.
Yes, you're right. I regularly see people hold up the Middle East as a shining star of stability and human rights with the notable exception of Israel.
Wait, what? Seriously, Israel has issues, but the rest of that area also has issues.
The article is about people coming in UNDER weight, and I've never seen any false-positives on that end.
Hi, nice to meet you. I'm 5'9" and 114 pounds, which puts me under the 18.5 BMI cut-off for underweight. I don't starve myself, I just have a fast metabolism. I'm a perfectly healthy individual.
Does that go both ways? Does Israel also have to admit that Palestine has a right to exist? Because they don't admit that. This seems like a pretty one-sided "right."
Fuck it, I'll take the hit as I'm always brutally honest...you wanna fix the whole problem? you do? then get rid of the gay fashion designers! Every designer I've seen picking those sickly bony bitches has been queer as a three dollar bill, which hey, you wanna be gay? Not a problem with that, but what I DO have a problem with is YOU choosing what is fashionable and sexy for women! That would be like picking a straight guy like me and expecting them to make guys look sexy...WTF?
To any gay fashion designers out there as a straight man, let me give y'all a little advice, mmmkay? WE LIKE TITS! Some (like me) prefer the gal to be natural, some don't care, but we ALL like some nice soft titties. Oh and butts is nice too, don't have to be no J-Lo park a 6 pack on 'em, but something nice and grab worthy is a plus.
But what you will find most men do NOT like is a woman that is so damned starved looking that when she takes a drink you can watch it moving like Slim Goodbody, that's gross. And have you ever been around a woman that damned starved for any length of time? Man ALL they do is bitch and whine and complain! There ain't nothing more bitchy on this entire planet than a starved female on some damned diet, let me tell you! And then when you finally get her to just eat a damned sandwich to STFU, who she gonna blame if she gained 1/16th of a ounce? that would be YOU!
Of course YOU ain't having to listen to that because you are going home to some dude that probably looks like Vin Diesel and would tell you to STFU if you said shit about how many calories he's got to put away to keep them big ass arms up. So do us straight guys a favor and just knock that shit off, okay? If you want something straight lined to hang them ugly ass fashions on go get one of them jap robots, then at least we guys can see "See sweetie, its just a damned robot so quit complaining about eating that damned rabbit food and try some of this BBQ" and won't have to worry about our women trying to look like them crackheads you been modeling, mmmkay?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"Right to exist"? What does that even mean? Does Palestine have a "right to exist"? Did the Seminole Nation have a "right to exist"? Hell, what does "right to exist" even mean when we're talking about nations?
"Right to exist" is a formulation created specifically for this one instance. Look throughout history and find me another example of a nation asserting a "right to exist" except by existing. "Right to exist" is a rhetorical flourish meant to promote a notion of specialness. A "right to exist" does not confer a "right to subjugate another people" and it doesn't confer "a right to break the laws of another country in order to influence its foreign policy" or "a right to demand protection".
A nation can exist as long as it either "conquers everyone around it" or "learn to live in peace with those around it".
I'm not trying to establish some moral equivalence between Israel and Palestine, but their little act is getting tiresome.
You are welcome on my lawn.
ounce
Other than the cringeworthy use of a non-metric unit, I'd heartily agree with you. I mean, I like slim girls, but it's absurd to expect every woman out there to be Audrey Hepburn.
Or you're thinking of the ethnic umbrella group, which refers to anyone who speaks a Semitic language, which is pretty much the entire Arabian peninsula since Arabic and Hebrew are the two most common.
Hebrew is not a common language, it's about as alive as Latin. Maybe you meant Yiddish?
Smegma: women actually produce more of it, do we go around extolling female genital cutting as a cure to that non-issue?
Circumcision is child abuse.
None of these other countries claim to be, or are held up as (A) democracies on a par with the US or the nations of Europe (B) Important allies whose interests are the same as the interests of Europe and the US.
No reason it can't be applied to men... though as others do point out, there seems to be less risk in showing men an ideal who's muscular, versus showing a woman an ideal that's impossibly skinny.
Personally, I have no problem with the idea in promoting realism in our depiction of men as well. But I do think it needs to be tackled as a separate issue, not because it *is* a separate issue, but because I'm cynical about the way the political system works, and think that if the two were put together in the same basket, we'd never get anything done.
First, the original home of these Palestinians is Israel, not the neighboring countries, so we cannot compare Israel's treatment of Palestinians to its neighbor's treatment of Palestinians.
Second, there is clearly a cycle of violence in which violence on one side is used to justify violence on the other. Any reasonable person would identify the start of this cycle as the attempt to convert a majority muslim nation (72% Muslim in 1922 according to Wikipedia) into a Jewish nation. During the conquest of Australia and the US by Europeans, the first settlers claimed to be peaceful people who settled unused land, and were afflicted by "terrorists" from the local population. Was this a believable story?
Just my ramblin's, but off the top of my head I'd say its a combination of:
- Shiite and Sunni aren't considered separate countries, so a lot of international politics can ignore that (relatively internal) dispute. In particular, Isreal's close relations with the US enhances our notion of a political border dividing two distinct cultures.
- Most non-Muslims wouldn't know the distinction between Shiite and Sunni (never mind any of the smaller branches) so a lot of us just see "Muslim kills Muslim" rather than "Shiite kills Sunni" or "Sunni kills Shiite".
- And of course, just general bad reporting over here. Even "Muslim kills Muslim" is less likely to be seen than "Terrorist kills Innocent," based mostly on the geographic location of the incident and usually regardless of the intention or innocence of either party.
That is not true. It bans models that don't conform to the World Health Organization's standards for body weight. Anorexia is a disease. Nobody is screening the models for anorexia. It is screening them for skinny.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I just want you to know, I plan on using that.
I'll do my best to give you full attribution, Bacon Bits.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not really. It would be more akin to removing the entire head of the penis rather than just the foreskin.
(Though of course any direct comparison is somewhat flawed because well, boys and girls are just different down there.)
As for the principle. Not even close. Circumcision has at least some benefit (though potentially some downsides too -- medical science is still fighting that one out.)
A girl having her clitoris removed on the other hand gets zero benefit to go along with losing much of their sexual pleasure.
The -only- purpose for female castration is to reduce their sexual pleasure to a low enough level that they won't feel the desire to have sex with men. (Of course they'd still sleep with their husband, but generally out of duty rather than sexual desire.)
I can't speak to how well it actually works (sex is about a lot more than physical intercourse, after all) but that's the general idea behind it. (Or original idea in any case.. social norms can keep atrocities like that hanging around long after their original purpose has been forgotten and I wouldn't hazard to guess at the current status of it in any particular country.)
The Israeli and Palisinian tribes both wandered across that land for many, many centuries. They were both there first. And those "native" Americans that Euopean settlers displaced? Yeah, they brutally murdered the previous, less tehcnologically advanced sotne age tribes when they colonized America in turn. Funny old world.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Soon fashion advertisements won't look like they're using pre-pubescent boys in drag any more.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds ...
You mean a law which demands a rich person (corporation) tell the truth?
Says everything about Congress.
Yeah one or two
Just the thought of my weight on a woman being "normal" is ridiculous.
It's not the weight you need to worry about, it's the body fat content.
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/library/blbodyfatcharts.htm
There's other factors, such as heart health. There's also mental health factors that tie in to an overall well-being. BMI is simply wrong.
Take a look through this gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/72157602199008819/ ... You might be surprised at some of the women who come up as "overweight" "obese" or "morbidly obese" according to BMI.
And say what you will, I frankly don't care. My BMI puts me in the "obese" category. My body fat percentage, along with my doctor, say my weight is exactly where it should be, and that I'm quite healthy. My resting heart rate is actually slightly bradycardic depending on my mood and how much sleep I got (it's been measured between 52-60bpm), and I run a 10k 3x a week as part of my normal training regimen. I don't get winded going up the stairs to work, either, and take the 7th floor walk-up daily. Yup. That sure sounds like somebody who's obese to me. Yay 200 year old kluge, you're absolutely correct about your estimation of my health!
And yet Israel still treats their Palestinian neighbors better than most of the nearby contries treat their Palestinian refuge camps. Naturally, the same people who blame the former on "teh Evil Jews" also blame the latter on "teh Evil Jews" (as well as the national debt, the behavior of Hollywood, and price of gas ,.....).
A caged bird is still caged. I would challenge you to get off your high horse and live in the world which they do.
It's anti-semitic in the sense that it's usually mentioned as part of some larger anti-semitic rant.
As others have pointed out, nothing anti-semitic was said so this is basically the same as Godwin's law here.
On the other half of your comment - if Palestinians were launching rockets at my neighborhood school, I would have been vigorously advocating a Carthaginian peace myself, so I can only admire Israel's restraint in the circumstances.
Israel doesn't show any restraint at all. Basically they're attacked by crude rockets of questionable effectiveness and they respond with military grade weapons. The number of Israelis killed by these rockets since 2001 is 31. I'm pretty sure that they've killed more innocent Palestinians than that.
i didnt think that they allowed pictures of women in the first place per hasidic law
I wish more people would open their eyes to some reality when it comes to "Palestinians ". For some reason there was no recognized "Palestinian" state until after 1967. It was under Jordanian and Egyptian rule after England finished fucking up the region and finally left.. Anything England missed fucking up the middle east was taken care of by the French.
Many Palestinians voluntarily evacuated their homes in 48 when the surrounding Arab countries told them the war would take about a week. No body ever mentions that 800 thousand Jews were forced to flee their homes in Arab countries with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. Do you think the Arab countries would support the Jews right of return today? Palestinians were allowed to move into Jordan with very little, if any, restrictions and the first thing they did as a group was stage an armed revolt against the Jordanian government who then created the refugee camps. The "Palestinians" were also damn near the only group of people on the planet who openly supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1991. Subsequently over 400 thousand were kicked out of Kuwait after the war. None of Palestinian supporters have stepped up with anything other than bombastic rhetoric and political dogma. Saudi Arabia alone could practically buy a state for the "Palestinians". Yasser Arafat died a billionaire be skimming any aid provided to help the people.
The last thing the "Palestinian" leaders want today is peace. They are making tons of money importing goods through their tunnel system and collecting tax revenue. The "Palestinian" leaders with influence live in their fancy villas in Lebanon and other countries so they never actually experience any inconveniences of the little people.
And right now which part of "Palestine" should Isreal deal with? They do not even have a united country government. The "Palestinians" cannot even agree with one another let alone any 3rd party. It's way past time for them to just admit the have lost every meaningful military conflict and start adjusting their outlook on life and drop the hate propaganda.
They have about the same chance Mexico has of the US handing back Mexican territory obtained using US military actions. And for those complaining about the US always supporting Isreal they should realize US support is the only thing that has kept Isreal from demolishing the entire area once and for all. The US aid is also used to provide the US with some leverage when it comes to Isreal selling it's advanced military hardware to countries like China. But if the Israeli aid goes away so should any other aid in the region.
Hell, the US wasn't even a very enthusiastic supporter of Isreal until 1973 when Isreal started arming their nuclear warheads to glass Damascus and Cairo. And while all this nonsense goes on the average Ahmed on the street gets the shitty end of the stick as usual and will continue to do so until the pro-palestinian groups admit that Palestinian actions and poor decisions represent the largest reason for the conflict.
I'm not sure if gay fashion designers are the problem, but as another straight male I agree that this "attractive" image is anything but.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Ever run a dozer, let alone an armored one?
Visibility isn''t great and many areas you can't see at all.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Therefore, seeing up-close and being around actual obese people on a daily basis would have a far greater effect than the occasional view of a rail-thin model in an advertisement.
Ah. That's why there's so much of an obesity problem. Too many fat people. Oh, wait, ...
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
That is the real crux of the situation, so what is the driver, what is really going. Same old, same old, a bunch of psychopaths with their narcissist minions are preaching nationalism, race and religion in order to drive conflict from which the psychopaths can gain profit and power. Palestinian land is not just stolen, someone is stealing it and the selling it or even better renting it, all behind the cover of nationalism, race and religion. The other side also has it's share who seek to further inflame the situation in order to guarantee their personal power.
The whole thing is spread even further beyond the boundaries of the country in question. Surrounding countries are using it to draw focus away from autocratic countries. Even crazier the country in question the highlights the surrounding autocratic countries to draw attention away from the big land rip off (only a very small minority gain huge benefit from the stolen land while the rest pay exorbitant rent, oh but your're fulfilling your religious heritage and should be happy to sacrifice).
Every war, every conflict has at it's core psychopaths who drove the conflict for their own benefit. There never were real reasons of nationalism, race or religion, they were all just lies, lies repeated again and again for thousands of year. We have been allowing a tiny percentage of psychopaths to get us to kill each other, so those psychopaths can call themselves chiefs, kings, emperors and presidents or what ever other make believe title they come up with. Stupid gullible pawns, fighting the psychopathic games of insane inhumane individuals.
Freedom of speech is the right to express 'opinion', it is not the right to lie or deceive, to present something as true or factual when it is not and it most certainly is not the right to benefit by those lies.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
considering there's no industry in Gaza and the West Bank, but getting to them means pretty much going from Mexico to the US
Is Mexico a walled-off ghetto as well, then?
How exactly can Israel unilaterally fix this problem?
Yes, but what is their position on anorexia? Their race is not so important as how they protect their women and girl children against the evil gay fashionistas out to make women look like the adolescent boys they lust like chocolate, thru making them desire to diet to ridiculous ends in order to look like the "beauty" they are DRILLED to believe by lovers of little boys bottoms. It's really indicative of the fact that homosexuality is a virus set to wipe out the breeding stock of heterosexuals.
Turns out that a good healthy injection of lead cures the gay plague.
Put heterosexuals in charge of clothing if you wanna see some provocative fashion and let the sissyboys play with their sisters clothes.
Not really. It would be more akin to removing the entire head of the penis rather than just the foreskin.
Not all forms of female genital cutting involve clitoridectomy; some of them are basically the same as, or even less invasive than male circumcision. But all of them are illegal in any civilized nation. If all people are supposed to have equal rights, male cutting is a crime just the same.
Circumcision has at least some benefit
Nope. Fanatics and mutilation fetishists will keep tossing that "benefits" bullshit around, but do not believe them. The "cure looking for a disease" has no confirmed discernible benefit. Every study in that direction is found to be heavily flawed. Real life numbers tell otherwise - for example, in several African countries, HIV rates are higher among circumcised men. So, where's that magical protection it was supposed to provide?
The -only- purpose for female castration is to reduce their sexual pleasure to a low enough level that they won't feel the desire to have sex with men.
Oh, did you really think the very purpose of circumcision is not reducing pleasure for everyone?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Israel can go and fuck right off.
This 'fluff' consideration does not weigh against the past 60 odd years of ethnic cleansing and murder and theft.
You had me, then you lost me.
I gotta say though you got a point about the industry being gay saturated and while I don't hate gays, I do want models with BEEEEG TEEETS! and Thick Curvy boootay! Models now are pathetic, but a great target for jokes. I even see some of the big box stores using "real" people as models for ads. Not plastic, not skinny, and some of them sexy as hell.
It would be better to be for heterosexual rights than against gay rights. But then the mods are about to school you and no one will see your crap anyway.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Is it the advertisers that are making boys less interested in anorexia and girls more, or is it that girls are more predisposed to be neurotic about their bodies and guys don't care because of the nature of how boys and girls are? Until you prove that regulating pretty will make girls hate themselves less, and that guys won't be competitive naturally without outside programming, you shouldn't be in charge of regulating stuff. What research I've heard was that girls have some serotonin thing that makes them anorexic or something. Not sure it's true, but nature is responsible for a lot of the way people behave and not advertisements.
They're working on walling off the rest of it. Parts of the US/Mexico border already are walled off.
Btw, you are aware, NAFTA to the contrary, that Mexico and the US are seperate countries, each requiring a passport to enter?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
So, Mr Coward, help me understand what you're trying to say:
Are you saying that since Sunnis and Shia kill each other it is OK for Israeli Jews to kill Palestinians?
Or
Are you saying that we shouldn't care when Israeli Jews kill Palestinians?
By the way, border disputes are basically between two countries that recognise each other (generally) but have never formalised the drawing of their borders. Israeli settlements are built on land beyond the recognised borders, so it's apartheid, it's occupation.
considering there's no industry in Gaza and the West Bank, but getting to them means pretty much going from Mexico to the US
Is Mexico a walled-off ghetto as well, then?
I take it you haven't heard. A hundred miles on each side of the border, both in Canada and Mexico, is border patrol jurisdiction. "Papers please, comrade." Yes, they are building a wall along the southern US border. They've had geophones planted along the Canadian-US border for a long time now.
You're surprised by this?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
What if a collection of companies put out hundreds of ads about smoking, and such a large number of insane people became terribly addicted to nicotine that painful externalities (eg, health care costs associated with emphysema rose and became a burden; and second-hand smoke from the increasing number of cigarette smokers caused problems for people who chose not to smoke) occurred!?
Therefore, we should place limits on the advertisement of cigarettes which manage the harm they are liable to cause.
Weight loss rebound only happens to people who are fat already. It's not a problem that anorexics face.
Let's try to be logical here and try not to blame everything on thinness.
Yes, I am aware of it. It wasn't me who came up with the Palestine/Mexico comparison in the first place, though, I was merely commenting on that.
I know about the "great Mexican wall". My question still stands: do you believe that it makes Mexico a "walled-off getto"?
What if a collection of companies put out hundreds of ads about smoking, and such a large number of insane people became terribly addicted to nicotine that painful externalities (eg, health care costs associated with emphysema rose and became a burden; and second-hand smoke from the increasing number of cigarette smokers caused problems for people who chose not to smoke) occurred!?
Good question. Those people sound pretty dumb. They can die of lung cancer if they want.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Under this logic, the government could censor pretty much anything. Some insane person went on a murderous rampage? Video games were the trigger. Ban video games!
This is extremely scary to me. Especially since we're considering banning/censoring things due to the stupidity of others. I don't care for such slippery slopes.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Weight loss rebound only happens to people who are fat already. It's not a problem that anorexics face.
This is simply not true. There are many people (mostly but not exclusively young women) of normal weight who starve themselves in an attempt to become extremely thin, and then become obese afterward. And obese people often become more obsese after such a cycle. That's just the way the biology works; starvation creates major changes in metabolism. If you're interested, here is one of many, many references on this phenomenon.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I spoke to a German a couple years ago whose childhood house suddenly became part of Poland after the war (and his family was kicked out). Why is nobody talking about the right of return of Germans? Because their military leaders were bad people? So we can gloss over what the Arab leaders have done to Jews?
I know about the "great Mexican wall". My question still stands: do you believe that it makes Mexico a "walled-off getto"?
I don't, no. Mexico's got a lot to say for itself (I often wish I were there, not here). Mexicans seeing their only chance for honest employment picking US farm crops may think otherwise.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Maybe you should learn how to establish causation before you blame all the problems of the world on pictures of thinness.
You mentioned Occam's Razor on another article. For starters, the obesity epidemic could be from what people eat, as opposed to some complex theory that boys and girls who see thin people, then feel inadequate and starve themselves, which then causes their body to instead rebound and become obese in mass hoards.
Isn't this issue something that's supposed to affect girls more than boys? Yet obesity is a problem for everyone. And in fact, studies show that people in thin Asian countries who migrate to the united states become fat, and that it's probably because of the food. Other studies show that American fast food is infiltrating thin cultures and making them fat.
What is more likely the explanation? And do you have millions of dollars to put into actually proving it with real research instead of flimsy correlations?
Pseudoscience, you mean. Circumcision is not connected with cancer prevention at all. On the other hand, this is a procedure that destroys half the penile skin (it is double-layered, keep in mind), and more precisely its most erotically sensitive bits , so it's no surprise that it is clearly linked to erectile dysfunction . Oh, how about over a hundred baby deaths , every year, in the USA alone, or life-lasting psychological effects ?
As a mutilated man, I'd fully support a return to Hadrian's law: a total ban, under penalty of death. Stern, but fair!
just an fyi: The Jewish reasons for circumcision stems from a God given commandment and has to do with being closer to God and distance us humans from our animalistic tendencies. It is not about being healthy or any pseudoscience (other than the fact that its a religious commandment). And if there is medical evidence to prove that ones offspring would die from a circumcision the child is exempt from getting one.
But But But, BMI never claims to be a measure of heart health, just a general metric about if a person is heavy or not.
If you're a 5'11" girl and weigh more than a 6'5" powerlifter, yeah you're a heavy girl. Your friends aren't going to tell you, your doctor just cares that you aren't one extreme or the other, and you ignore asshole meatheads on Slashdot who tell you that, so it's good to have some kind of metric.
Also, running 10Ks is cardio but doesn't develop muscle.
This article simply states that chemicals in the body seem to cause you to be hungry and sated via a feedback mechanism which is supposed to regulate itself.
It does not say that starving yourself causes the feedback mechanism to fail and instead make you unstoppably hungry. What should happen is starving yourself increases the Eat signal, and then feeding yourself triggers the Stop Eating signal. And that is what happens. Just like all the other endocrine feedback mechanisms. You produce one hormone, and then another hormone tells you it's time to stop via that hormones release.
Some people, such as with Prader-Willi syndrome, are always hungry and you usually have to lock your food up, but that's a rare disease.
The article is mainly pointing out how dysfunction and or feedback of the signaling in the body suggest what the chemical signals are doing and that they may be involved in regulating feeding and energy stores, and when the signaling is dysfunctional it in theory could cause obesity, and maybe even anorexia.
You're going to have to do a lot more to prove a causal link to fashion advertising causing obesity.
This is what I think:
The reason people are fat is because the Stop Eating signal takes time to release and people are still able to eat even after they've had enough, and even still after receiving the Stop Eating signal, and even when they aren't hungry. You can see this after a certin age. Kids will stop eating when they're full but adults will eat however large a portion is served to them.
And then the food we're eating is contributing because it's dense in calories without much fiber or substance and promotes obesity.
Then the obesity itself may mute insulin and hormone responses, making people eat more.
I don't think it's caused by starvation. A lot of people indicate a sort of point where they stop being hungry after starving and then maybe even a euphoria. There might be an addictive quality to starving for some people who are susceptible to anorexia. I'm not sure, but your theory is wrong in my opinion.
Some people are genetically that thin. I know a family like that. The mother is 5'11", and was incredibly skinny in her 20s. She has a really high metabolic rate, and spent years as a runner and endurance rider. She eats twice as much as I do. Her daughter is the same, but an inch taller, and, like mom, is a serious jock. Her day job is ocean rescue, her idea of a good swim is to cross Monterey Bay, and a good bike trip is Portugal to Italy. She's had people think she's anorexic.
Working ballet dancers are often like that. They look thin from a distance, but meet one and you realize they're all hard muscle. So are many horse people.
Apartheid wall? Not sure I follow you. I thought the wall was to protect Israeli citizens against foreigners who want to attack them. Are you saying that they are building the wall to separate some of Israel's citizens from others?
Isn't it a bit hypocritical of you to complain about others throwing terms around when you are throwing "Apartheid" around?
Clever signature text goes here.
Huh? You are trolling, right?
Being attacked with crude rockets still means you're being attacked. Thanks to measures by the Israeli government, they have managed to minimize casualties. Hamas, on the other hand, will use its own civilians as human shields to maximize human losses when Israel responds to attacks.
Clever signature text goes here.
[citation needed]
Clever signature text goes here.
Maybe that's what the song Cornflake Girl is about, by Tori Amos.
The Jewish reasons for circumcision stems from a God given commandment and has to do with being closer to God and distance us humans from our animalistic tendencies.
Yeah... disgusting, isn't it?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Agreed - I used to be at the very bottom range of the healthy BMI when I was exercising. And that was ok: you do not want to have to carry around extra pounds if you can avoid it. And that is despite a strong bone structure (used as an excuse way to often, but it can be measured).
Still, you have to start somewhere, and the BMI is a reasonable starting point. Plus those models are not usually the muscular type...
Of course you should subtract implant weight :-)
If a documented correlation existed between that class of advertisment and wholesale instances of self-starvation, psychosis and malnutrition, then YES, that class of advertisment should be curtailed by a sane society. Knowingly distorting the terms (substituting "some insane person" for a significant portion of the population and "all advertisements should be banned" instead of "conclusively-proven-to-be-harmful advertisments should be banned") does not change that fact.
That's as logical as saying "English is not a common language. Maybe you meant German?"
Hebrew is the national language of Israel. It is no longer a dead language.
Conversely, if the Israeli military openly (and unapologetically) had worn t-shirts exhorting the murder of children pregnant women (1 shot 2 kills, wohoo!) from my people and at the same time claimed the right to police my people, I'd probably be in a bit of a huff myself.
Thing is, while I don't want to pull things down to a golden mean fallacy here, the fact of the matter is that Israeli and Palestinians both have a history of abominable behavior. I do think Israel, in claiming to be a democratic and justice-driven country, should be held to a commensurate minimum standard, but I could say the Palestinians aren't entirely innocent.
But I won't. Why? Because the idea of "Israelis" and "Palestinians" is a myth. They don't exist as monolithic blocks of like-minded people. If we look closer, we'll find people on both sides who are actually moderate, and while they're mostly ignored by the media, they do still exist. Indeed, the most heroic of these people are the ones on both sides who meet and engage in actual dialogue.
Shouting invectives and calling for harsh punishment of the Other is, of course, much safer and more satisfying.
This.
My brother wrote a paper a few years ago about just this issue. He compared the BMI to an index used for crocodiles (which used a 3rd power), and proved that the BMI is hopelessly useless.
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
Depends very much on how you do it. For instance, saying "The jews are keeping the Palestinians walled into ghettos" is in fact antisemitic. Saying "Israel are keeping the Palestinians walled into ghettos" isn't.
It's all about the choice of words - often choosing the right synonym for (more or less) the same thing, which can be a problem when crossing language barriers.
Unfortunately a lot of the public rhetoric we hear from the Arab/Muslim world are heavily laden with strong antisemitic phrases and often it's obvious that they indeed were chosen to be antisemitic without being overtly antisemitic. Some of this might be excused by language barriers but some are obviously intentional.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
You're looking at the wrong end of the height scale. Someone who's 4'6" would be considered "underweight" at 76 pounds, which is actually a healthy weight for someone that short.
Correct. There's issues at the other end due to the lack of distinction between fat and muscle (taking the data of Arnold Schwarzenegger at his prime and calculating his BMI put him at the heavy end of overweight close to obese - which he clearly wasn't as he was Mr. Universe with zero body fat), but at the lower end the BMI works fine to determine underweight.
ObJoke: Garfield: "I'm not overweight! I'm underhigh!"
As with any fomula it can be inverted and thus I can see that I lack a bunch of inches in order to be healthy... ;)
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
It doesn't take a fool to see that a simplistic comparison of a person's height to their weight is not going to cut it. BMI just tries to put a nice simple number on something that is not nice and simple, your weight and your health.
Some people have more dense bones, hence are heavier. Compare them to a person of the same height who has less dense bone structure and that person is now "overweight". Does that make any sense to you? They are the same freakin' size, and BMI can't allow for that. It's too simplistic of a measurement..
> Sunni Muslims kill Shiite Muslims, nobody cars.
Phew, I was waiting for a car analogy, the thread was missing one. Thanks.
What if someone put out an advertisement about ice cream, and some insane person decided to kill themselves because of it!? Therefore, all advertisements should be banned because a minuscule portion of the population might decide to do something harmful because of them!
Yes, that's a good example of what we call the "stupid dickhead" line of reasoning. Jesus tittyfucking Christ you're a retard.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Can you give me a ruling on, "The jews in Israel are keeping the Palestinians walled into ghettos"?
I mean, as long as you're establishing the ground rules, it would be useful to get clarity.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What's the problem? You're still free to be as thin or fat as you like, how is it affecting your freedom? The models involved can still be stick thin if they want, they just can't inflict themselves through advertising on impressionable young people.
Do you seriously think that there should be no limitations on public advertising at all? Would you really want your granny or kids to see hard core animal porn (or whatever) on public billboards?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I don't see how requiring the warning to be printed on advertisements that were shopped is really any different than requiring cigarette ads to print the surgeon general's warning about lung cancer.
Banning the use and appearance of underweight models in the US might be a little trickier though.
The model in those magazine are not made to be attractive to male, but rather to female. let me summarize this : men like more women with "forms" showing fecundity : large hip, 8 figure, large breast. Women are more attracted to form showing youth, in other women, that is thin, small breast, young face. That is why the model are a-starving : they want to appeal to the people they are marketed at, NOT male, but female.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
I think there should be NO photoshop at all, how about that! Make it so the industry shows the picture for what it is, if the photographer is good and the model is good looking , it will be a good photo, instead of doing all sorts of photoshop to make everything look good. Makes me think that we have become so intent on fixing up things after the fact, instead of making it is good to begin with. I have seen many great photos without touchups, why cant they have those? Dont tell me the film is too expensive now!
FWIW, when I was younger and in rather good shape, I was around 8% body fat. I'm approximately 6'1", and at that time weighed around 200 lbs. According to the BMI index I was about halfway between overweight and obese. At 8% body fat. I was by no means a body builder (I mostly cycled and ran, though I did a small amount of weight training as well). At 220 lbs now it says I'm boderline obese, wearing a pant size 2" larger in the waist than I did at 8% body fat.
Somewhat useful measurement? Sure. Widely effective? That's debatable.
Just another ignorant American.
Firstly I don't accept other country mistreating the Palestinian refugee. But even then it is NOT an acceptable excuse for Israel to mistreat palestinian. "the other guy is worst" is a slide to the bottom, and if you ask me the other surrounding country are not better than israel from that POV.
But even then , the legal situation is waaaay different. Palestianian territory are occupied by Israel, and at time military of Israel roll over there. That alone place at least a greater on israel responsibility of the palestinian situation.
Now if you ask my personal opinion ? Put all terrorist from hamas, and all radical from israel politics or religious in a pit with knife and attached by chains, then wait until there is only one single side survivor. free the poor Israeli or Palestinian average guy from their antics. My experience from the local politics is that both minority asshole groups are the one with an itnerrest with a continued conflict whereas the silent majority suffer through those fools.
So the only right you recognize is the one to exist like a pig. Because communicating like a human being has some effect on others. If granny and the kids are little piggies they should be locked safely away in pens someplace. "Political correctness" is more degrading to a man than living in a sty.
>Of course you should subtract implant weight :-)
models not pornstars...
Hello.
By the standards of the fashion industry, I'm morbidly obese... *gasp* she wears a size 12?!?!
Put that into terms that the nerds on Slashdot will understand, please and thank you.
"The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
Seems like this says it all;
There was no time to waste, so many girls were dieting to death.
Just to clariy, there is no 'Semitic' ethnic group, and there never was. Semitic is a strictly linguistic term, referring to a group of related languages (Hebrew, Arabic etc.). Anti-Semitic is a modern term first coined in the late 1860s and 1870s in Germany and Austria. Pseudo-scientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" current at the time merged with Anti-Jewish feeling, and Anti-Semitism became a pseudo-scientific, politer way of saying you hate Jews. Semites in German literature at this time was used interchangably for the word Jews, therefore, in context, to be Anti-Semitic is to be Anti-Jewish. See this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#Etymology) for details, but I also recommend the excellent book by Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (http://www.amazon.com/Semites-Anti-Semites-Inquiry-Conflict-Prejudice/dp/0393318397) on this topic.
In short, anyone who says "I can't be anti-semitic because I am a semite" is either ignorant or duplicitous. You can be an Arab, you can be a Jew, you can be a Persian, but you can't be a Semite.
Or, at least, that they're under-informed enough to not know that there is a specific word to describe the Jewish nationalist movement as opposed to the Jewish ethnicity.
No, it's not. Antisemitism is the, as you stated, discrimination or hate directed at the Jewish ethnicity. Anti-Zionism is the hate or criticism directed at the attempts to establish a Jewish nation state in the Christian holy land.
An informed opinion would use the correct term.
BMI is an good indicator of health, not a good measurement of it. Someone with a BMI in the healthy range is very likely to be a healthy weight. Someone out of that range needs more accurate (and more expensive) tests to determine whether they are over or under weight. For the CS grads out there, BMI is like a compact Bloom Filter...yes, you get false positives, but it's still a really useful data structure if you understand its purpose.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
except that a: you link to two anti circumcision sites and b: you link to clearly flawed studies from the only non anti-circumcision site?
Let's tackle the ED study first:
Researchers surveyed 300 men and found that circumcised fellas had a 4.5 times greater chance of suffering from ED than noncircumcised guys.
So yeah, 300 men = clearly linked? Not in your imagination. We have no idea of the situation of these individuals or anything leading to a conclusive study.
100 baby deaths a year? You don't suppose that might be quite a bit of hype for something explained as "1.3% of male neonatal deaths from all causes". So 1% of all deaths? This doesn't even say if other causes were factored into the death or not.
Also the last one? another anti-circumcision site? Have you ever tried reading things that involve real science, and not just are sources which explicitly support your viewpoints? I'm going to guess that the answer is 100% no. Maybe you should think things through before you pull a Jenny McCarthy and cause outbreaks of diseases around the world based on websites that claim things are dangerous, have a bias, and are unreasonable which actually put other people around you at a real risk. You're in the same boat of junk pseudoscience as creationism, the vaccine freakouts, and republicans, freeper.
I'll enjoy my reduced likeliness of Penis cancer, thanks.
except that circumcision doesn't really have to do with HPV. Why do you guys keep referencing HPV?
I'm not saying everyone should or must be circumcised - the parents of the kids decide, but I don't understand the complete disrespect towards people who are that pops up in threads occasionally.
You're still free to be as thin or fat as you like, how is it affecting your freedom?
I care about other people's freedom, too.
The models involved can still be stick thin if they want, they just can't inflict themselves through advertising on impressionable young people.
Do you seriously think that there should be no limitations on public advertising at all?
I don't mind demanding warnings, since that isn't actually censorship (it just makes them include something extra and doesn't censor their original message). But that is all.
Would you really want your granny or kids to see hard core animal porn (or whatever) on public billboards?
Frankly, I couldn't care less. I don't believe in the right to not be offended.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I disagree. Since you provided nothing else, that's really all there is to say.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
You're talking about a one-off case of "The vidja game made him kill!!!!!" What this deals with is mass advertising - modeling is pervasive in almost every corner of advertising. Those young people drinking Bud Light (eww), the couple who have herpes, the woman in the "great clothes for summer" all fall under a stereotype of beauty that our country, and others, push like crack to society as a whole. Someone recently did a "plus" size ad to show how accepting they were, but the only thing plus about the models were the boobs and butts - they were still skinny in the stomach, no flab, no reality.
Further, when this kind of thing has such a bearing on people growing up that we're constantly worried about our weight, what we eat, do we exercise enough, it builds a mental image of what we *should* look like - nothing in society teaches us to accept who we actually are. This is dangerous for the wrong people because they'll resort to fasting and purging - two activities that have serious consequences (purging moreso, unless it's long term fasting). I know a couple of girls who used to go out to lunch and see who could eat the least, or take turns puking, or brag about how much they've thrown up in the last day. It's disgusting and it's a facet of our everyday lives.
Not to mention, this kind of mindset is dangerous even after a person has stopped purging or fasting - if they notice they've gained any amount of weight from eating right, it can cause a cascade of depression that will either result in action (purging, fasting again) or inaction - more depression, overeating, etc.
An advertiser has no place modeling their clothes with a model shooting up heroine - they have no place modeling their cloths with a model whose lifestyle is threatening to the health of others.
Further, when this kind of thing has such a bearing on people growing up that we're constantly worried about our weight, what we eat, do we exercise enough, it builds a mental image of what we *should* look like
Such a shame. Perhaps they should stop for a moment and think. There is no magical entity that decides what you "should" look like, and fasting is simply a foolish solution to begin with.
This is dangerous for the wrong people
The "wrong people" can lock themselves away in their houses, then. I don't believe in the right to be offended, and I don't believe in the right to have things banned because you react stupidly to them.
It's disgusting and it's a facet of our everyday lives.
Maybe they'll eventually vanish from the gene pool.
Not to mention, this kind of mindset is dangerous even after a person has stopped purging or fasting - if they notice they've gained any amount of weight from eating right, it can cause a cascade of depression that will either result in action (purging, fasting again) or inaction - more depression, overeating, etc.
That mindset does indeed sound dangerous. Perhaps they, ones who are so significantly affected by mere advertisements, should get help.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If a documented correlation existed between that class of advertisment and wholesale instances of self-starvation, psychosis and malnutrition, then YES, that class of advertisment should be curtailed by a sane society.
I'll have no such thing. Your "sane," emotionally-driven society can go elsewhere. Casualties are acceptable to me if it's in the name of freedom. Especially when it's the person's own actions that are at fault. Sorry that there are people hurt by these advertisements, but they'll just have to get help.
substituting "some insane person" for a significant portion of the population
Would it be better to say that I find them foolish? Significant portion of the population? Really? Not that I care, but what is "significant"? I'd rather not let the actions of people I deem to be imbeciles decide whether or not things are censored.
We've already seen this kind of mentality with video games (although that isn't conclusively proven). If it was conclusively proven to be harmful, would you support censorship or the act of banning advertisements for those, too? What about things we know are perfectly innocent right now (such as advertisements about ice cream)? What if those kinds of advertisements were, for some reason, conclusively proven to be harmful to a "significant" (however you define that) majority of the population? And by "harmful," I mean they'd decide to do foolish things because they saw a mere advertisement.
Would you support banning or censoring those? If so (which is what I find likely), talking to you is a complete waste of time. If not, why?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Because one proposed mechanism by which circumcision may reduce penile cancer is through reducing the skin area where HPV infection can take place. If HPV infection is not a concern, circumcision is the likely less effective in preventing penile cancer.
In any case, the important point is: there is no evidence that circumcision has any medical benefits in the US or Europe. Claims to the contrary are simply attempts to justify religious superstition through pseudo-rational claims, the same kind of pseudo-rational nonsense that we get from other religions about celibacy, marriage, etc.
As a liberal, within wide limits, I do not think it is the job of government to keep you from harming yourself or your children. But your holy book says I should be killed, and it says that people should cut off parts of their children's genitals because God appeared to a 9 year old boy thousands of years ago and told him to. Pardon me if I just laugh if you start complaining about people holding that in "complete disrespect". Seriously, what do you expect?
Ditto.....In the USA we are already losing so many of our freedoms right now!
Apartheid, apartheid, apartheid, settlements, settlements, settlements.
interesting.
All throughout Arabia, Shiite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims, nobody cares.
Sunni Muslims kill Shiite Muslims, nobody cars.
But if an Israeli kills a Palestinian - Apartheid, apartheid, apartheid.
Border disputes are border disputes all across the world. But if one party of a border dispute is Israel, it's occupation, settlement, apartheid racist.
You forgot to mention Sudan, with South and North killing each other. Or Rawanda, where almost one million were killed because of religion.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Pseudoscience, you mean. Circumcision is not connected with cancer prevention at all. On the other hand, this is a procedure that destroys half the penile skin (it is double-layered, keep in mind), and more precisely its most erotically sensitive bits , so it's no surprise that it is clearly linked to erectile dysfunction . Oh, how about over a hundred baby deaths , every year, in the USA alone, or life-lasting psychological effects ?
As a mutilated man, I'd fully support a return to Hadrian's law: a total ban, under penalty of death. Stern, but fair!
I guess you would stop the Muslims, Jews and others who practice it. Close to a million people, n those groups.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
This isn't parts of your genitals in the implied sense. This is a piece of skin. It's not really all that different from cutting off a skin tab, and doesn't affect functionality. They aren't cutting any part of the functional organ. Claims to the affirmative of all these dangers and harms are also simply attempts to justify religious condemnation through pseudo-rational claims, and are the same kind of pseudo-rational nonsense that we get from other religions about celibacy, marriage, etc. It's almost entirely moral panic on something fairly benign (or almost entirely, if you ask me).
I agree with you that any book based on a magical sky wizard that someone holds as a belief system is either full of shit or in complete denial. But I don't see circumcision as some kind of demonized thing. How dare people get circumcisions, etc. etc. fear and yadda yadda. I was raised to be moderately religious and jewish and I basically am entirely atheist now, after having gone to Israel and being told I needed to make Jewish Babies which runs contrary to anything other than an explicit religious-political agenda. I don't see value in marrying people because "religion".
I guess I'm just somewhat shocked how crazy people troll circumcision.
I don't know too many 4'6" adults. That's not to deny the existence of midgets, dwarfism, little people, or whatever the correct term is... but those conditions should preclude the use of a "general guideline" for height to weight ratio.
This signature is false.
There are many places in the body where some seemingly minor structure can make a big difference. Your eyelids are also just a "skin tab", but they certainly affect functionality in a major way. The foreskin is obviously not quite as important, but it is more than just some useless bit of skin.
Perhaps. Or perhaps you're just too used to it. Imagine if the practice didn't exist and some parent would start cutting of pieces of skin from their sons' penises, possibly followed by some oral suction. They'd be locked up for child abuse, and probably declared criminally insane.
Glad to hear you don't want to kill me after all ;-) Seriously, though, the Old Testament isn't just irrational, I think it's a pretty violent and disturbing book.
Hmm, could this be related to the fact that male circumcision is usually associated with a particular religion, while female circumcision is usually associated with a different religion?
No, that couldn't possibly be the case since everyone knows that the former religion is constantly subject to irrational hatred and stigma, while the latter religion is given a free pass by the media in the name of political correctness.
It's not about free speech, it is a law that ensure honesty. Yes you can still say and show whatever you want just you have to own up to the fact that its a lie. Evryone seems to forget there are TRUTH in advertising laws this just ensures the same.
I think you're going to have some trouble getting Jews to stop their ritual circumcision. Hey, it's part of their culture, and if they believe their god demands that skin be cut from a boy's penis as part of a religious ceremony, I don't think they're going to give up just because you say so, Stormwatch.
Some cultures stretch necks, some scarify the skin, some pull the earlobes using bones and some cut skin off the penises of boys. Human beings are weird, what can you say? When your god tells you to do something, you don't ask questions, I guess.
Exactly the reason why all religion must be abolished.
I just have to quote Robert M. Pirsig here: "When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion."
Think, people... Think! - Don't do things just because someone else tells you, and especially not if some weird voice inside your tells you (even if it seems to be coming from the neighbors dog or similar).
Think! Question!
"One billion flies can't be wrong..." - well, that they all love a steaming pile of shit doesn't mean it's right for you - or even good for you.
Ban all religious and ritual mutilations of any kind. If people - when they're old enough to make a mature decision - then chose to have their penis mutilated, their skin discolored or burned, their neck streched or whatever - they're most welcome to do so. Adults must of course be allowed to do to themselves as they please.
But to allow children and infants to be mutilated - No. Not in a million years. It must stop and parents must be forced to pay restitution and damages to their children if the children decides they were violated and perhaps want the procedure reversed either completely or cosmetically.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
I'll have no such thing. Your "sane," emotionally-driven society can go elsewhere. Casualties are acceptable to me if it's in the name of freedom.
I don't see how the society I advocate would be described as emotionally-driven, particularly given the fact that it's you who in this thread uphold abstract ideals as ends unto themselves. In contrast, my position is utilitarian in this respect; I find the notion of checks and balances on any power to be profoundly rational. Absolute freedom implies the freedom to impinge on the freedom of others, and as we see, this is exactly what tends to happen. The strong eat the weak unless somehow constrained. Social mores is soft power, but it's rank delusion to claim that it's somehow voluntary or nonexistent.
The society I advocate is one in which entrenched power structures are to some degrees prevented from running roughshod over the bottom percent in the name of unrestricted profit. It is functionally equivalent to preventing a company from welding the doors of its factory shut to keep workers from going home. Laws and restrictions stamped out such practices, and no doubt said companies must have chafed at this blatant disregard for their freedom to work their employees like medieval serfs. But that's the tradeoff you make when living in a society that is fundamentally interconnected.
Your acceptance of casualties in the name of freedom is also noteworthy in two other respects, in that (a) you're plainly not among those actually affected and (b) the wording of it strongly suggests that as long as the rallying cry is freedom, any excess could be justified. Do you really wish to take that position? It rarely ends well.
Especially when it's the person's own actions that are at fault. Sorry that there are people hurt by these advertisements, but they'll just have to get help.
You have not proven that their own actions are to blame in any way, shape or form. Racism inflicts measurable harm. Sexism inflicts measurable harm. And as stated repeatedly, pressuring others into self-torture inflicts measurable harm. If people are hurt as a matter of course by a phenomenon, then it is in the interests of society to address that issue, or society unravels. Most civilized countries have accepted this.
Would it be better to say that I find them foolish?
At the very least, it would be honest.
Significant portion of the population? Really? Not that I care, but what is "significant"?
Now you're bandying syntactics, and poorly.
We've already seen this kind of mentality with video games (although that isn't conclusively proven).
In the case of video games, no correlation between them and wholesale violent behavior has been established by any reputable study, so this is a false equivalence.
If it was conclusively proven to be harmful, would you support censorship or the act of banning advertisements for those, too?
Your use of the word "too" implies that I support either censorship or banning of photoshopped pictures. Had this been the case (as opposed to you putting words in my mouth, which is what you're now doing), then your argument would hold water. Predictably, I don't and it doesn't. I support restrictions, such as labeling. You know, as per the OP?
What about things we know are perfectly innocent right now (such as advertisements about ice cream)? What if those kinds of advertisements were, for some reason, conclusively proven to be harmful to a "significant" (however you define that) majority of the population? And by "harmful," I mean they'd decide to do foolish things because they saw a mere advertisement.
Ah, I see. You think this is a voluntary decision, much like depression after repeatedly being called a "fucking nigger" by everyone and his dog would be the foolish
Absolute freedom
No one mentioned anything about absolute freedom...
in that (a) you're plainly not among those actually affected and (b) the wording of it strongly suggests that as long as the rallying cry is freedom
Neither of those seem "noteworthy" to me (the former is just irrelevant as well as an assumption). As if I can't stand up for what I believe is "freedom" if I'm affected by something...
Do you really wish to take that position? It rarely ends well.
Yes, I do. And whether it ends well or not is subjective.
You have not proven that their own actions are to blame in any way, shape or form.
I can't think of anyone else who is at fault. Who is starving themselves?
And as stated repeatedly, pressuring others into self-torture inflicts measurable harm.
That could hardly be said to be happening.
then it is in the interests of society to address that issue, or society unravels.
Not really. Society is incredibly resilient. It wouldn't collapse because of a few people with anorexia. But then again, you seem to be pretending that your vision of society is the only way. It's merely one way.
Now you're bandying syntactics, and poorly.
No, I asked a question. One that you failed to answer.
In the case of video games, no correlation between them and wholesale violent behavior has been established by any reputable study, so this is a false equivalence.
Immediately afterwards, I described a situation where they were found to be "harmful" to certain individuals. And I even admitted what I'm quoting, so what was the point of repeating it?
I support restrictions, such as labeling.
Such as listing ingredients? I've said elsewhere that I have no problems with such a thing since it cannot be considered censorship as long as it doesn't censor the original message.
You think this is a voluntary decision, much like depression after repeatedly being called a "fucking nigger" by everyone and his dog would be the foolish decision of a black person in America during the sixties.
Nothing close (as direct) to the latter is happening, but yes, that's what I believe.
Btw, I once again note your attempt to reduce a multitude (the entire advertisment culture) into a single instance ("a mere advertisement") to bolster your position.
You're looking too far into things. That wouldn't bolster my position, that's simply my opinion. Maybe "slew of mere advertisements" would be slightly better? Just because I don't state the so-called problem exactly doesn't mean I don't understand it.
Because neither banning nor censorship was part of my position in the first place. You would know this, had you not been too busy erecting strawmen to actually read what I wrote.
Okay. That's slightly more agreeable if true.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Are you actually arguing that, say, the Cherokee were the first tribe to ever occupy a given area? Almost the entirety of history is the more-advanced group of people brushing aside the less-advanced group of people - it's not like that happened for the first time ever in the 1500s ...
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And folks don't realize the damage that image causes, especially to non whites. My GF is a Cherokee and was in abusive relationships all her life because she was convinced she was "ugly" because she didn't look like a brown barbie doll when the simple fact is...she looked like a Cherokee, duh! Anyone who has been around Plains Indians knows their females have a dominant body type, they are shorter than white women, straight hair, and their bodies have more of a compact shape with larger breasts and buttocks than white women, that's just how their DNA evolved.
It has taken me years to slowly rebuild her self esteem and to this day if I raise my voice, even if it is not in any way directed at her but say bitching because i got pwned in a game she will instinctively flinch like I'm gonna hit her. all because she was told all her life off the rez that she didn't have "good" skin and "good" hair and a body shape that fit what these damned fashion designers pushed. Well fuck them damned fashion designers, not everyone can look like Barbie. The funny part is we guys don't put up with that shit, most guys are quite happy being who they are but then again we've got everyone from Jack Black to Vin Diesel on the screen so maybe it isn't fair to compare. But I think it sucks for them to push an "ideal" that frankly a hell of a lot of guys wouldn't even find attractive. Personally I'd take my Cherokee princess any day over a damned barbie doll, to me they look like plastic people and are a little too uncanny valley for my tastes.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No one mentioned anything about absolute freedom...
The gist of your reply clearly was that freedom was a goal unto itself, in the service of which you'd accept casualties. In short, I have a hard time seeing the functional difference.
Neither of those seem "noteworthy" to me (the former is just irrelevant as well as an assumption). As if I can't stand up for what I believe is "freedom" if I'm affected by something...
Yeah, the former was a low blow, and I debated to myself whether to include it. In retrospect I should have been less harsh.
I can't think of anyone else who is at fault. Who is starving themselves?
This is my central beef with your position. I understand what you're saying, but I feel you reduce the argument to absurdity. True, if we go by the most reductionist interpretation possible, then everything a person does must be their (and only their own) complete responsibility, and any amount of coercion, compulsion, or what have you becomes irrelevant. I just can't see why that needs to be the favored interpretation. To me, it seems not just detrimental to a functioning society, but actively spiteful. It feels almost tailor-made to shatter cooperation between people.
Initially, I (wrongfully) assumed you chose that interpretation from a desire to harden your heart to the suffering of whoever you didn't personally appreciate. In light of what you wrote, though, I'm getting the sense you genuinely seem to approach it as an ethical standpoint. Is this a valid observation?
And as stated repeatedly, pressuring others into self-torture inflicts measurable harm.
That could hardly be said to be happening.
I disagree. I have far too much experience with the effects of trauma not to recognize it. I may have used emotionally charged words ("self-torture") for effect, but I stand by it. When people have been socialized to such an extent that their brains are literally wired to be unable to see themselves as anything other than grossly obese (even when weighing in at 80 pounds and reeking of ammonia from far-reaching starvation) then it's no longer a simple matter of choice, because given that skewed lens, of course they're going to ride that endorphin high of starvation and do all they can to reduce a bit more.
These are among the more grotesque examples, of course, but the extreme makes for a clear example of what I mean.
Not really. Society is incredibly resilient. It wouldn't collapse because of a few people with anorexia. But then again, you seem to be pretending that your vision of society is the only way. It's merely one way.
Rebuke noted; I'll have to admit to some amount of myopia. Anyway, I'm not talking about a few people with anorexia tearing down society. I'm talking about the entire shebang, whether it's racism or sexism or classism or whatever and allowing the fruits of those things to run rampant throughout a society. In short, I tried to clarify my position of what I feel is necessary for a functioning society.
I support restrictions, such as labeling.
Such as listing ingredients? I've said elsewhere that I have no problems with such a thing since it cannot be considered censorship as long as it doesn't censor the original message.
Allright. Then we're in less of a disagreement.
You think this is a voluntary decision, much like depression after repeatedly being called a "fucking nigger" by everyone and his dog would be the foolish decision of a black person in America during the sixties.
Nothing close (as direct) to the latter is happening, but yes, that's what I believe.
Then your position is internally consistent. I may not agree with it, but it's honest.
You're looking too far into things. T
The gist of your reply clearly was that freedom was a goal unto itself, in the service of which you'd accept casualties. In short, I have a hard time seeing the functional difference.
The functional difference is that I don't believe in absolute freedom. If I did, I'd believe that government shouldn't interfere with people's freedom to murder others.
True, if we go by the most reductionist interpretation possible, then everything a person does must be their (and only their own) complete responsibility, and any amount of coercion, compulsion, or what have you becomes irrelevant.
If we go the other way, then nothing anyone does is their own fault. Saw an advertisement and committed suicide? Their fault, no matter what it was. Murdered someone? Your parents' and society's fault.
I typically blame someone else if they're directly involved in some way. An example of that would be shooting someone with a gun. Not just displaying an advertisement (of which there are many) and indirectly causing certain people to starve themselves.
When people have been socialized to such an extent that their brains are literally wired to be unable to see themselves as anything other than grossly obese (even when weighing in at 80 pounds and reeking of ammonia from far-reaching starvation) then it's no longer a simple matter of choice
I don't see it as being anything other than their choice. Just because others (or advertisements) make them feel bad (or however you wish to describe it) doesn't mean it's not their choice. I can certainly choose not to starve myself, and I have.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Again, sources please.
Clever signature text goes here.
True, if we go by the most reductionist interpretation possible, then everything a person does must be their (and only their own) complete responsibility, and any amount of coercion, compulsion, or what have you becomes irrelevant.
If we go the other way, then nothing anyone does is their own fault. Saw an advertisement and committed suicide? Their fault, no matter what it was. Murdered someone? Your parents' and society's fault.
PRECISELY. Hence, such reductionism is a bad thing.
I typically blame someone else if they're directly involved in some way. An example of that would be shooting someone with a gun. Not just displaying an advertisement (of which there are many) and indirectly causing certain people to starve themselves.
It seems our principal difference can be illustrated by the trolley problem. My favored solution is the utilitarian one, whereas you I believe would see that solution as the greater evil. Right?
I don't see it as being anything other than their choice. Just because others (or advertisements) make them feel bad (or however you wish to describe it) doesn't mean it's not their choice. I can certainly choose not to starve myself, and I have.
What's that to do with the price of fish? For a comparison to be made, the two choices must be even remotely equal, and they are not. Your choice is trivial because there is little pressure on you to make one.
Shit, as of this moment I just scarfed down some food from yesterday, because I was hungry and I chose not to accept that. I purposely made lots of extra food last time, so it was just a matter of putting it in the microwave. Does that mean I get to sneer at some starving peasant in Burundi for failing to summon the fortitude necessary to do the same? Of course not.
Tl; dr: Of course we can make it all about personal choice if we reduce the argument itself to a caricature. The real world is much more granular.
yes, the beauty standard deals with the look of white women (though it's hard enough for them to live up to), so you could say it's racist as well as sexist.
"She does not know her beauty,
she thinks her brown body has no glory.
If she could dance naked under palm trees
and see her image in the river, she would know.
But there are no palm trees on the street,
and dishwater gives back no images."
- Nina Simone, Images
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Hence, such reductionism is a bad thing.
I agree, and I don't think I did such a thing.
whereas you I believe would see that solution as the greater evil. Right?
Yeah.
Your choice is trivial because there is little pressure on you to make one.
I still believe they have a choice. They're creating this pressure in their own minds (even if they were born more susceptible to it). Some people are quite obviously immune to it, or at the very least, they don't starve themselves because of it.
No one is really saying, "Starve yourself if you're not this skinny." They create that message themselves by interpreting the advertisements in a certain way and then making a decision. No one is holding a gun to their head, and no one could be said to be forcing them to do anything.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Hence, such reductionism is a bad thing.
I agree, and I don't think I did such a thing.
Fair enough. Seems like there were more than a few hasty assumptions made in this thread.
whereas you I believe would see that solution as the greater evil. Right?
Yeah.
Okay, then I understand your position. I don't share it (you may have guessed as much) but it's clear.
Your choice is trivial because there is little pressure on you to make one.
I still believe they have a choice. They're creating this pressure in their own minds (even if they were born more susceptible to it). Some people are quite obviously immune to it, or at the very least, they don't starve themselves because of it.
No one is really saying, "Starve yourself if you're not this skinny." They create that message themselves by interpreting the advertisements in a certain way and then making a decision. No one is holding a gun to their head, and no one could be said to be forcing them to do anything.
I think our ethical systems diverge here. I see the specific advertisement climate as intense social coercion and borderline brainwashing, and I don't consider the question of volition that clear-cut in the first place. We interpret everything that happens to us, because we really can't not. Since neural makeup differs between individuals, we interpret the same things differently. Logic suggests this will influence the outcomes, creating a different range of choices for each person.
...I could go on, but I get the sense we're both aware of the other's stance on the matter, we just don't agree with it. It sounds a bit dickish to say you're entitled to your opinion (because that's the sort of thing assholes tend to say when they really mean "your opinion is worthless"), but yeah. I suspect we'll keep disagreeing on this issue, which is OK by me. A world without differing points of view would be a pretty bleak place anyway.
I get it that Israeli government basically says, "Our women are so dumb they are basing their life-altering choices on the glamour magazine covers, we have to look after them". That's a bit insulting, I suppose, but unfortunately it's also true.
I also get the American First Amendment expert saying "this paternalistic shit won't fly in the US", even though it's rather easy to find examples of incredibly patrernalistic American legislature - that's what American First Amendment experts are for after all, to create an unrealistic (one could say photoshopped) image of the American Freedom.
What i don't get is why everyone's so cool with a democratic government passing a law that prohibits some women from working based on their physical appearance. Isn't it kinda, you know, exclusionary?
4'6" is the lower end of normal for women from Southeast Asia. If you're going for a "general guideline" formula, it needs to cover at least 99% of the population, everything from the 4'6" woman from SE Asia to the 6'7" average North American basketball player.
(BMI falls down for tall people, as well: the average NBA forward is moderately overweight if you go by BMI.)
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Well then, congratulations, you've just found something interesting to investigate!