I'm actually really pleased to see any attempts to address the horribly twisted body image that women are bombarded with today. But ideally, I would like to see models of a healthy average size. If someone's genetics gives them a larger body frame, it doesn't mean that they are doomed to dangerous weight. Healthy can weigh all over the spectrum. I agree that we have to be careful not to try and sell people on the obesity that is now an epidemic in our country.

But I admit, I certainly do hope the day will come when the 'coke wh*re' body ideal is trashed. If you are a healthy size 0, good for you! As a woman, I would love to see more healthy women closer to the average being spotlighted.

I've always been more of an athletic build guy myself. I like to see girls with muscles.

I guess the way I feel when I read articles like this is that I don't like being told what I should find attractive one way or the other. I honestly don't find either terribly attractive and the tone seems to say that I should feel guilty for admitting as much.

I didn't take it that way, but maybe I read it wrong.

I think the issue is that our culture has latched onto a particular superficial standard of beauty that is both unhealthy and, for most people, unrealistic. That's what I took the issue to be.

What most people don't realize is that anorexic's are also generally clinically obese. Their body eats their muscle tissue saving every ounce of fat for survival.

This is what I think is hotness.

Fat or "skinny fat" doesn't do it for me.

the general modeling industry has been eschewing unnaturally thin models for over 20 years now, in favor of people more closely resembling that picture Paleo posted. Just open a Victoria's secret catalogue or skim www.modelmayhem.com for evidence. When you contrast two niche markets - runway and plus size modeling, in this case - of course they're going to be startlingly different.

If we're talking about issues with the modeling industry, I would say the absolute fear of aging is a much more critical issue. Humans did not evolve to look 19 for decades, and yet somehow women like Cindy Crawford have successfully ceased aging.

You made me read a Daily Mail article! I feel dirty now.

Truth.

The way my friend in the fashion industry put it, runway models are not supposed to be beautiful. They are supposed to showcase the clothes. This is one of the many reasons that their faces tend to be relatively plain, indistinct, and expressionless. Pick up a high fashion magazine and pick out a random sampling of 12 or so runway models and it is often difficult to tell them apart. So in that sense, stating that they are a standard of beauty is sort of like saying that freakish, steroid using, overtanned male bodybuilders are somehow the standard for male attractiveness. They define an outlier, but only the mentally ill would define it as normative.

I guess another issue I have with this article stems from this observation. By pulling the example of runway models and elevating that straw man (girl?) as "normative", they seem to be trying to downplay serious issues of obesity, health, and individual body image. The existence of one bad example does not validate the opposite extreme.

In the end, body image is a deeply individual and personal issue. What is appropriate for one person is what is appropriate for them. I know, for instance, that it is inappropriate for me to color my hair blonde, gain 50 pounds, or fake and bake myself like some goombah from the Jersey Shore. And I don't need a fashion magazine to tell me that.

Add "androgynous" to that list of requirements for high fashion / runway, too. You're absolutely correct that runway is a very special niche.

Hilarious side note. That model is size 12, meaning she's still a lot smaller than many women.

Dress sizes are also not terribly standard and the sizes themselves have gone up pretty steadily as well. When folks say that Marilyn Monroe was a size blank, they fail to recognize that the size inflation renders that statement pretty meaningless.

It gives a decent point of reference. You're right, though, it's a bad one. Monroe only weighed 118 pounds at five foot five (super short for a model, btw). Not exactly chubby.

The point that people miss is that she was beautiful, so who cares about her measurements? I think both the plus size model and the thinner model are beautiful in that article. Neither hold a candle to my wife, of course, but they're still beautiful.

I haven't read the article, but my opinion is that if I can't motorboat on a randomly selected part of your body (Sorry hun, I know it tickles but I SWEAR I'm picking these at random), then you need a sandwich.

Best of both worlds. Break an egg on her abs, then motorboat her kneecaps.

This right here is a big part of the problem. Different men (and women, for that matter) like different kinds of women, but we don't see that distribution in beauty magazines or most tv shows/movies. We see basically one type of woman. In fact, the two types referenced are both commonly preferred and under represented.

Also this