Size 0 Isn't Always too Skinny!

Those of you who know me in real life (esp those who have been clothes shopping or to the beach with me) can tell you that I'm rocking a tiny potbelly and a dash of cellulite on my thighs. It sucks when a back injury makes your beloved daily run not so much an option anymore at the ripe old age of not-even-old-enough-to-rent-a-car-yet, leaving lameassed powerwalking suggested by your chiropractor as a viable alternative. Consequently, I no longer hit the pavement and/or make it to the gym as much as I should. I was actually considering working out more until the European fashion industry told me that - by virtue of my clothing size - not only am I unquestionably borderline anorexic, but that the mere sight of me could potentially push some adolescent girl over the edge towards developing an eating disorder.

How am I sooo skinny if I have noticeable flab? By the dictates of London and their blanket rules for all of womenkind, of course. Here's how it works: rocking the potbelly, generally eating cholesterol/sugar/bleachedflour-laden foods, exercising maybe once a week and eating veggies about twice a week, I naturally stay at a size 2 (I can wear 14/16 kids in a pinch). What can I say? Genetics have given me a small skeleton, such that no matter how fat or thin I am, I always look "small". And I have met quite a few healthy grown women next to whom I look Amazonian. My dad and almost everybody in his family regularly shovels in enough food to feed a small country in one sitting and still looks like a bunch of pipecleaners knotted together. My metabolism isn't quite that insane, but eff it, I am beautiful and I like me.

From a medical perspective though, I should be eating better and exercising more. My cholesterol number is nearly double that of my body weight in pounds. Genetics probably also gave me a proclivity towards heart disease and osteoporosis. Etc. But if I were to clean up my diet and tone up like logically it sounds like I should do in the better interests of my health, I'd very likely drop a clothing size, which according to these ignoramouses, would plant me firmly in the "anorexic" category. Nevermind that I am nowhere near as skinny as the size-0 Lilly Cole. If I were that bony, I'd probably wear like a size 8 kids'. Amazingly enough, everyone is built differently, thus it's asinine to make blanket rules that a certain clothing size is just across-the-board dangerously thin. Should women who subsist on iceberg lettuce, evian, and nose candy be portrayed as "how all 3 Billion of you ladies are supposed to look"? Absolutely not, and the misogynistic assholes who run the fashion industry need their asses kicked for promoting that. But the EU needs to recognize that not every size 0 got that way via some unnatural and unhealthy means.

Here's the irony in all this though: Bravo to London and Madrid for not wanting young women to see only one narrow (pun intended) standard of beauty. But if you're going to push the fact that everyone's built differently, be enlightened enough to recognize that there are plenty of healthy, well-fed size 0s out there. Emphasize more BMI, a far more objective way to measure fat, rather than just a clothing size. Journalists reporting on this, that goes for you too. Excessively thin models are the problem, not size 0 models. You can be one without being the other. Get it right, and stop using "size 0" and "anorexic" interchangeably, it makes you sound ignorant.

Furthermore, the ugly truth is that it's a deeper seeded issue than fashion models that causes people to have eating disorders. If modern human society for two seconds stopped sending people, especially women, the message that our intrinsic moral value as a person is determined solely how physically pretty others perceive us to be, then maybe young women wouldn't be pushed to go to such extremes to meet these beauty standards. If European legislators are that concerned about eating disorders, they need to treat the actual problem rather than its symptoms. Problem is it takes far more guts and far more work to fix the real problem.

And kudos to France for being above this jackassery. The scrawny little genes of one of your native daughters are in part to blame for my tininess anyway.