Thursday, July 17, 2008

Big is... um

I share several significant dimensions (not height, sadly) with the first 'big girl' to reach the final of Miss England. Not sure how I feel about this. Anything that means fewer teenage girls (or indeed grown women) hate their bodies has to be good, so I salute her role model curves. And she's only seventeen -- and wants to be Miss England -- so it would be unfair to expect her to have too much in-depth awareness of body fascism.
But the bit about beauty coming from within is squidged rather breathlessly into the last five seconds, like someone mouthed it at her from behind the camera. Maybe I should send her a copy of the Beauty Myth. With a Post-it note pointing out not to feel bad if she never reads it -- the beauty myth is harder to shake off than Catholicism. Heroin has nothing on it.

joella

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