treating women like children who can't handle advertising (again)
The Spanish government is making fatter mannequins for the purpose of socially engineering its populace to stop thinking that thin women are fashionable. They're bringing in some Homeland-Security-type technology to determine the mannequins' proportions:Using laser-fitted booths that can take 130 measurements of a body in 30 seconds, the Health Ministry is fanning out across the country to assess the sizes of Spanish women.... The manufacturers' garments will then reflect the dimensions of real women, not catwalk waifs.Bear in mind that this is not a STORE doing this. It's the Socialist government.
(Incidentally, fashion in larger sizes doesn't have to be government-mandated. Torrid is doing just fine in a laissez-faire economy, because their clothes are hot, and people like their advertising).
Now, Spain is not a particularly obese country, but imagine if you did this body-imaging and averaging business in the U.S.? Simply because something is "average" does not make it "normal" or "good" or "healthy." I'm not sure whether to call this a Fallacy of Middle Ground or just, you know, paternalistic government.
And may I add: can you even imagine any government thinking it has a responsibility to initiate a feelings-changing campaign regarding men's self-esteem?
Isn't is a little infantilizing that the state would need to protect women's oh-so-delicate feelings from advertising? Do we have campaigns to make men who can't afford big manly offroad-terrain-demolishing SUVs feel better about that? Maybe a campaign picturing "real men" of average incomes driving average cars. Lay off the advertising, people: we're destroying our nation's men! Um, no. We can all handle it. It's a free market; if you don't like the advertising, don't buy the product. If lots of other people do seem to like the advertising, well, that's why it's there. And we're done!
posted by JenIsFamous at 3/28/2007 03:16:00 PM
6 Comments:
A more effective way for the government to encourage obesity is to shoot all the thinnies; "This is an ultimatum: you either get fat or get a fucking bullet in between the eyes."
There's no reason why an obese won't be good for the economy, in fact I think it could be beneficial in many more ways... More material demand in the clothing industry, more restaurants (which means more chefs; chefs need to wear clothes too - you dummy).
Thin people are bad for the economy. No wonder the commie bastards want them out.
Just my two bits of bum fluff and a button.
Socialists can go play with themselves!!!
Most Spanish women, it should be noted, generally follow the same rule that most Italian women follow, which is that they remain fashionably-dressed and in obnoxiously good shape all the way through motherhood and right up until one very sudden moment where they lose six inches and gain 50 pounds to become the short, stocky old women we all know and love. I believe this happens instantly upon the birth of the first grandchild.
On a side note, Spain also passed legistlation to offer a country-wide amnesty for illegal immigrants. This happened about a year or two ago. The long and short of it is that, while still somehow remaining a fully-functioning and respectable place to live, millions of people gained access to health care while the Spanish government collected millions in otherwise black market-bound tax money. But I'm sure a wall around the country would have been a good idea too.
The trouble for Spain, Mike, is that as Mark Steyn points out in "America Alone", the Iberian peninsula (as well as much of the rest of Europe and the industrialized world) is doomed by its own demographics. Simply put, they ain't making Spaniards or Italians like they used to.
As Steyn points out, "static replacement" of a population (i.e., neither growing nor shrinking, but rather remaining constant from generation to generation) requires 2.2 more live births per thousand deaths, and the indigenous populations of both Spain and Portugal are reproducing at closer to half that rate. Like Italy, then, each of those countries necessarily must depend on an influx of immigrants (legal or otherwise) to remain viably distinct, lest they effectively extinguish themselves within the next three generations by failing to live up to a rather basic biological imperative to reproduce at least in lock-step with the mortality rate.
It has been said that "a nation is a language with an army". While that definition may be somewhat overly simplistic, the point is taken. Perhaps a better way of stating the definition would be to say that a nation is a dominant culture with an army. Spain and Portugal's (and Italy and Canada's) flawed "strategy", then, is to encourage immigration in the hopes that new arrivals--traditionally known to breed at a faster rate than indigenous populations--can be assimilated into their respective cultures.
In a sense, the Spanish and Portuguese are like the Borg; with one notable exception: While they also depend upon the assimilation of those in their thrall to ensure survival, it is not resistance that's here futile.
That is bullshit. Women who develop eating disorders are damaged long before they look at their first cosmo. Seventy percent of women with eating disorders were sexually abused and or molested as children. Others came from homes of conflict where parents drank, were OCD, or religious fanatics. Men take their anger out on the rest of the world.
Women take their anger out on themselves.Its the way the world has always been.
Eating disorders are also genetic. Food addiction is linked to the same gene as alcoholism.
As well, eating disorders are in fact the psychiatriac illness with the highest mortality rate. Until the world realizes these diseases are about more than food women will continue to die.
Kudos to the government for taking some responsibility and being proactive. If they are making mannequins, why not make them realistic? They are not the recommending a meal plan, they are attempting to reflect reality, and that is a very good thing. As far as comparing it to a similar program for men: first, there alreaedy is plenty of advertising featuring middle aged balding unattractive men having a wonderful time in life. Second: if women are abusing men every few seconds and there were shelters in every county for men suffering at the hands of women... yeah, the government would be bending over backwards to attempt to help these men, not to mention to punish the women -- and that part never changes -- the laws, or social customs, punishing men are never enforced.
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