I have written this page for women who suffer from an eating disorder. I am not qualified to treat your illness, but I want to give you two ideas, which I hope will help. The first idea comes from my work. I work in advertising, and I think some adverts manipulate women into feeling unattractive.
The second idea comes from the fact that I am a man. Because I am a man, I know what men find attractive. In particular, we aren’t looking for size zero. In fact, a healthy weight is far more attractive—because health is attractive.
Most advertising works in two stages. First you convince people they have a problem, then you sell them the solution. In ethical advertising, this is just about putting things in a logical order: ‘Fed up with watery instant coffee? [you have a problem] Try the Fandangle Auto-Brew, for real coffee without messy filter papers. [buy my solution]’
What if the problem wasn’t real? Some advertisers actually do invent problems, convince people they suffer from them, and then sell them the ‘solution’. These companies are encouraging people to waste money, and the manufacture of their unnecessary products harms the environment.
Adverts for clothes and beauty products are particularly bad for this. Women who read the adverts are expected to compare themselves with the model, feel unattractive, and buy the product in order to become more like the model. However, actually, people who model these things look quite ordinary. They look a mess when they first get out of bed, or when they’ve been out in the weather. They only have to look glamorous for the photo-shoot.
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Once the photo-shoot is over, the pictures will often be manipulated on a computer. This is a chance to fix anything that was slightly out of place. Oddly enough, it is also a chance to change the model’s body shape. If this was done too much, obviously she would look grotesque and misshapen. However, if it is done with subtlety, it can give her a more fashionable shape. Of course, no real woman can ever be this shape; human beings are not made that way. Fashionable beauty is now created on a computer, and totally unattainable.
Don’t believe me? Here is a Barbie doll, shown next to a picture of Lynn Bari, who was a model in the days before computers. Notice how they are different shapes. Barbie has bigger eyes; we tend to see anything with big eyes as cute. (That’s why cartoon figures always have big eyes—usually much bigger even than Barbie’s.) Barbie has a longer neck than a person. Finally, of course, Barbie is much thinner than Bari, even though Bari looks as though she is wearing some kind of corset.
In fact, Barbie is so thin that if she was a real woman, she would probably die of starvation. People have tried to estimate Barbie’s body mass index, and it seems to be around 13.5. That is about the weight where people tend to die from malnutrition. We know we can’t have bigger eyes or a longer neck, even if we wanted them. However, we can’t really have a Barbie waist, either. Humans aren’t designed to be that shape.
In a recent study, women were asked what they thought men were looking for. 55% of women thought physical appearance was the most important thing, and only 1% picked intelligence. It sounds as though most of the women taking part in this study had misunderstood men.
It’s true that we are attracted to beautiful women. But we also like to have a conversation, to flirt, to share a joke. Those things are all part of being attractive; it’s not just physical beauty. What is more, men differ in the kinds of conversation, flirting and jokes they like. This means that different men are attracted to different women.
If you fancy a particular man, and he doesn’t fancy you, that’s painful and I’m sorry. On the whole, though, it’s a good thing that we can’t agree on who is attractive. Imagine the alternative: we would all fight over the One Perfect Woman. One couple would be happy, and the rest would be disappointed for their whole lives.
Also in the study, 22% of young women said they’d sometimes stayed at home because they didn’t think they looked good. All I can say is that they might be surprised what men are looking for.
Don’t listen to advertising people like me! The world isn’t as crass as we make out. In reality, it is impossible to be a fashionable shape—but the people you meet probably won’t notice or care.
Some people have wondered why I created this page, and why I pay to advertise it. Here is a brief answer:
On the whole I think advertising has a useful and ethical role. When a new product is produced, someone has to tell people about it, otherwise it won’t sell. If it doesn’t sell, the producers have wasted their time, and the people who could have benefited from the product will have to get by without it.
At the same time, I can’t deny that some advertising is harmful. Beauty product advertising makes millions of attractive women feel unattractive, and I think that’s rather irresponsible. Responsible businesses sell products that empower people, rather than making them feel bad.
Because advertising is my work, I don’t want to see it used in such an unethical way. That’s why I produced this page and pay the cost of advertising it on the search engines.
I hope this page has helped you. Whether it has or not, please send me feedback using the form above, so I can improve it. If you like this page and you have a blog or other website, please link to it. If enough people link to it, the search engines will show it to people automatically, and I can stop paying for advertising!
(Photo credits: Flickr/tangi_bertin and Flickr/manitou2121. In accordance with the wishes of tangi_bertin, the Barbie versus Human image may be reused under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. If you want to reuse the image, you should probably download compare.xcf and edit it in the free Gimp photo editor.)