Cuddles said:

man we'd be hungry and cold.

DesireeNevermind said:

and our life expectancies might only be about 35

NDRU said:

Well, if people continue to feed on awful processed shit and too much of it when they do, it will go full circle and life expectancies will be back to 35 again.
[Edited 2/17/10 15:58pm]

JustErin said:

I'm all spun around now! Down is black, left is white!

JustErin said:

but all those prescription meds will shoot us right back to....I dunno....50 maybe?


yeah we will be 50, fat, and still hungry.

CarrieMpls said:

Our bodies are not made to consume all the things that we eat with little or absolutely no effort.

Cuddles said:

but have no fear! we are evolving did you hear?
we are changing, we are adapting to our new crap diet!! and within a couple of generations…

This thread has gone to shit

OMGZ, for those of you that didn't read the super awesome state fair thread...we ate deep fried Snickers, bacon and butter.

It was so good.

JerseyKRS said:

I get the bacon.


I can kinda understand the snickers.



But deep fried butter? WTF?

Lammastide said:

Oh, please. In my experience, I have never heard more hateful bile regarding women's weight than I have coming from gay men. Instead of leaping to the defensive (I know plenty of gay men, most even, are perfectly reasonable in that regard.) why don't you stop and ask just why it is that the bitchy, woman-hating queen is such a common stereotype to begin with?

At any rate, we're talking about runway models, not the popular social beauty standard of the age. The twain rarely meet at any point, and they don't now either, so your defense that anorexic-looking bodies are required for runway models as a reaction to what's commonly held as beautiful is a little abs urd, don't you think?

This is an interesting discussion and it brings up another issue. If you're like me, you have trouble gaining weight. I'm 5'11 and only weigh 134 lbs. My BMI is 18.7 and anything under 18.5 is underweight. It's only the last few years that I finally gained enough weight where I wasn't underweight. When I was 18 I only weighed 112 if you can believe it and I am a guy! I looked like a skeleton. I still think I look too thin but I just don't gain weight from eating food. Today I had a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, plus two oatmeal cookies, and for lunch my dept at work just ordered Chinese food. I'll probably have steak and potatoes for dinner. I just had a physical last week and got my blood work done to see if there is something wrong with me. I have to eat even when I am not hungry just so I don't lose weight!

meow85 said:

Defensive? I ain't Harvey Milk, and I'm on no one's payroll.

The stereotype exists because folk have long held an a priori assumption that mysogyny is a cornerstone of homosexuality, then they exploit the instances you mention (very real, though they may be) as normative "proof" of their idiot assumption. From there, it doesn't take much to imagine the proven assumption plays out in, say, the profession endeavor of gay folk. That's Sociology 101.

Moving on, sure, we most immediately are discussing runway models. But let's be real, eh: If we were only talking about runway models, would this topic always strike such a chord? The very reason it moves people is because, with regard to runways and the world of pop beauty, while "the twain rarely meet," they damned sure are playing a game of Telephone. The aesthetic we observe on the runway informs what we see on magazine covers, which informs what we see in vanity sizing, which informs the notion of what size we think we need to be... and the reverse. Very few people are lost on that symbiosis these days. Fashion houses experiment with some pretty far-out looks in both designs and models to elevate some of their signature haute couture to the level of art -- and no one understands that sh*t ; but at the end of the day they are a business, and no business is gonna try to sell things -- here, a look -- for which there isn't a ready market. That's Economics 101.

So, understand: I think there is a certain level of culpability in the fashion industry for this crap. I just don't buy 1) that it is intrinsic to the industry's "gayness"; or 2) that the industry is dabbling in anything the public isn't on some level slouching toward and decided it loves/hates already.
[Edited 2/19/10 12:25pm]

^ I didn't say this brand of mysogyny was intrinsic to the industry's "gayness", but IMO I think it's a mistake to not ask if there might be a correlation somewhere.

It's no secret that certain aspects of popular gay male culture are deeply mysogynistic and anti-woman. Pretending that's not true doesn't make it go away, and it obviously doesn't address the problem.

If a particular industry has a certain social problem endemic to it, and said industry is largely populated by individuals coming from a specific social caste, we need to be asking about the hows and whys of the problem and if one has anything to do with the other.

meow85 said:

I'm happy to see you reiterate this, then, because that the industry's misogyny is intrinsic to its gayness is precisely the argument of the commenter with whose "sentiment" you agreed.

Anyway... I agree: There's no mistake in asking the question. There's a BIG mistake, however, in presenting an answer -- as did the commenter -- before any acknowledgement, first, of the pretext begging the question and, then, real critical engagement of facts that'd arrive at an answer free of illogic. Groups have gotten their butts kicked for years for that sort of thing.



OK, here's the deal: The syllogism seems to be slouching toward...
P1)I know misogynist gays (or, in the case of the original commenter, I assume gays are misogynist).
∴
P2) Many gays are misogynist.

Now, already there's a fallacy of hasty generalization here, because a critical mass is assumed based on limited, unmeasured observation. (And the original commenter's thinking bears a worse fallacy of bare assertion, as his premises are based ostensibly on assumption altogether and no observation at all.) But the reasoning doesn't stop here...

Moreover,
P3) The fashion industry is rife with gays; and
P4) The fashion industry is rife with misogyny.
∴
C) The rifeness of misogyny in the fashion industry is attributable to its rifeness of gays.



The fact we -- again -- merely assume the truth of premises 3 and 4 notwithstanding, this very well could be the case, of course. It warrants further investigation. In the meantime, nevertheless, this continued reasoning bears another fallacy -- this time of third cause. That is, it attributes misogyny in the fashion industry to misogyny in some prevailing gay contingent, when, if those exist at all, both could very well be attributable to the overarching misogyny of the general population, pop culture and market... or perhaps something else altogether! Somewhat further undermining the reasoning is the fact gay designers and model recruiters do also employ more "normal-weight" models (which we're in some ways functionally [and probably with liability] equating with being "not or less misogynist" here) and, conversely, that their straight counterparts have also been using the same cache of skeletal models, churning out the same butt-less designs and using the same vanity sizing... for years and years.

So... sloppy. Nothing godless, mind you -- but, yep, sloppy. And misidentifying the problem also won't make it go away, much less facilitate the problem's address. It often, we've seen, opens the door to more problems.
[Edited 2/22/10 7:08am]