General

A common thread on this blog is an argument, fought with ideological fervour, about what constitutes a "normal" adult female figure. The louder crowd insists that slender women are bizarre anomalies who ought to be force-fed into obese conformity because the rotund figure of the average Australian woman is "normal" and thus ideal.

The other side holds the view that the human body is meant to be lean and fit and disparages the fat lobby's attempts to re-rate our body shape standards to suit an unattractive mean. I'm with the second group. The average Australian woman is 5'4" (163 centimetres) and a size 14. These dimensions may be typical but they do not make a woman normal, they make her FAT.

Arguing that societal norms ought be drawn from the commonplace without regard for merit is completely indefensible and we wouldn't apply the same logic to any other circumstances. Crime is a common occurrence but being a bad one, we continue to fight it. Same goes for fat. Excess weight is an undesirable condition from every aspect. Pretending otherwise doesn't change that. It just encourages complacency and dress size creep.
...
So, no. A fat body is not a normal body. It's an aberration that we countenance to the detriment of our looks, health and self-esteem. Shifting the aesthetic goal posts to normalise a disproportionately high fat-to-muscle ratio on the basis of that figure type's ubiquity is equivalent to rewriting home building regulations to accommodate shoddy workmanship. Prevalence is no justification for acceptance. On average, Australians are not normal. We're fat. And if we don't start doing something about it soon, the Lucky Country will one day be better known as the Fugly Country.

* For those who want to know, I'm 5'9" (175 centimetres) and a size 12 but due to a fine boned frame and light musculature I ought to take my own advice and reduce to a size 10.

* Mana Lord
* March 14, 2009
* 02:49 PM

I agree completely with you Charlie, it seems Australia has a lot of bitchy, vain and horribly judgmental people if these comments are anything to go by.

How terribly self-righteous and hurtful. Why do people even CARE? Does looking at curvier people make their eyes fall out, does it? I'm skinny myself and I barely see any skinny bashing- just fat bashing. All the lazy, nasty, paranoid cliches are just sad. Why so hateful? Or is it because larger people are an 'acceptable' target to prey upon?

As possum said, if you don't have a weight problem, you probably have other problems that are less visible- no-one is perfect! There's many more problems and issues in the world to worry about than this one.

Look at things like curvier women being celebrated in the past, people didn't 'instinctively' find them horrible, now did they? The fat phobia is therefore not a cultural thing, not a natural thing, just an obsession with some sort of conformity- because we all need to look 'perfect' for everyone's viewing pleasure, now don't we?.

I will say this; there's nothing wrong with wanting to be skinny, or being skinny(I know)... but it's not some godly ideal we should all look up to. We should just be ourselves, or whatever we want to be for ourselves, not someone else's expectations based on a fictional idea of being 'natural' and conformity.