If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

On June 26th I posted my thoughts about young women Flaunting Their Fat. Now is an article in the Los Angeles Times, July 4th, 2006, Calendar section titled “Letting it all hang out”. In that article staff writer Robin Abacarian calls those females with the rolls haning over their jeans and too-tight clothes Sausage Casing Girls.

She starts out: The Sausage Casing Girls are everywhere this summer, their muffin tops hanging over their hip-skimming jeans, clothes shrink-wrapped around fleshy bodies that look as if they’ve been stuffed – like forcemeat – into teensy tops and skintight pants.

She goes on to say that we could be tempted to applaud these girls who are going against the Southern California image of way, way too thin. There are health risks, which I mentioned in my earlier post, but as the L.A. Times writer points out there also seems to be a problem with being in touch with reality. She thinks the girls are in “deep denial, pouring themselves into clothes that are putting them in a phthon squeeze.”

From the article: “Everyone wants to buy a small size, even it it looks terrible,” said psychologist Nancy Etcoff, who directs the Program in Aesthetics and Well Being in the department of psychiatry at Massacsetts General Hospital. “There is shame in buying sizes that are abaove 8, which some think is already a big size.”

Abacarian goes on to write: Young men are not oblivious to the legions of girls wearing too-tight clothes. Bryce Widelitz, a 19-year-old college student who works as a day camp counselor in Cheviot Hills, said he thinks two things when he sees this: “My first impression is that it’s just digusting,” he said apologetically. “My second impression is that they are just trying to be like everyone else and fit in: ‘Everyone else is wearing it, so why can’t I?’ ”

When I was at the Fiona Apple concert I asked my 35 year old son what he thinks of the girls with bellies haning out over their jeans: “Gross!”, which pretty well sums it up.

There is a photo of a cute young woman, Blanca Perez, 26. She has in-style clothes on but nothing is haning out. She says, “There is such a thing as a cute fat chick, and that’s me.” And she is cute. But her clothes are tasteful.

Again, however, my question: jWhy are girls okay with looking so unhealthy? Even in cultures where it is the norm to be fat, the norm then is unhealthy. I feel bad for the young people who are going to pay a price all their adult lives if they stay fat.

For me, it’s all about looking healthy, vibrant, and filled with life.