Feminist Health

Health and quality of life is one of the most important topics women face. Issues like abortion, birth control, breastfeeding, dieting, eating disorders, exercise, sports, surgery and weightlifting all have a role to play in women's rights and equality.

A Woman's Choice
An Open Letter to Anti-Abortionists
The New Pill: The End of Menstruation?
Body Image
Diet Grrl
Under the Knife
Bony Models Banned in Madrid
Criminalizing Women
Examining the Evidence for Breastfeeding Infants on Cue
Dancing for Self-Knowledge
Imagined Bodies, Imagined Communities
Gender Biases in School Sports
The Ugly Side of Beauty
Suzy's Guide to Weightlifting for Women
Breast Implants for Dummies
Wombs for Rent
Anorexia on the Internet
Inuit Birthing Practices
Bulimia and Depression
The History of Breastfeeding
Covert Sex Discrimination against Women as Medical Patients

Women & Sports

It is true that women are physically smaller than men, but that doesn't mean we are weaker. Estrogen promotes muscles quality, not size like testosterone does. As such women are often stronger than they first appear. Women athletes therefore can often surprise you with their strength, speed and skill. (And contrary to stereotypes female athletes are not dykes. They're women with a strong backbone.)

The Travesty of Ladies Only Golf Lessons
Sport in a Masculinist World
Dancing for Self-Knowledge
Gender Biases in School Sports
Suzy's Guide to Weightlifting for Women
The Often Misunderstood She-Hulk
You throw like a girl!
Women's Fitness

A Semi-Sarcastic Ode to Anorexia

By Suzanne MacNevin - 2011. Updated February 2020.

When I think about supermodels, I don't think about fashion at all. Fashion has little or nothing to do with what supermodels actually do with respect to their effect on society. What I think about is two-fold:

#1. Anorexia. #2. Sex.

Strange how they go together, even though anorexia is so often unattractive. These rare few women actually manage to be anorexic and attractive at the same time and thus become supermodels, largely due to the gift of photography and airbrushing. (For those of you who don't know, airbrushing means that the picture has been softened so you don't see blemishes, scars, cellulite and in some cases they are also removing visible rib cages. These days we just call it photoshop.)

But are supermodels really that sexy?

Maybe, maybe not. Personally? I prefer my female partners to have some meat and fat on them.

So anorexic supermodels really are not "sexy" at all.

And yet supermodels are used to sell perfume, make-up, lingerie and fashion accessories.

I am not going to show any images here. A Google search on your part can find the kind all sorts of degrading images of anorexic women. Not that I recommend you doing that, I am simply stating that we are not going to show those images here.

So instead I want you to just close your eyes and imagine an anorexic model. Maybe you've even seen photos of such models in the past. Imagine that image in your head.

Are they actually selling a real product? Most of them are not. They're advertising fashion, but they're not actually selling it. With the exception of Heidi Klum promoting McDonalds most of them are advertising products we can't even buy in the local mall. So what are they really promoting? Nothing worth buying, or nothing you can buy locally. Why not be honest about it. These aren't "supermodels". Not really. Sure, there are a few big name celebrity supermodels, but thats just a "title". A job description.

We don't really see supermodels any more either. Not like we used to during the 1980s and 1990s.

They're gone. No longer popular.

What is popular now is the waif thin fashion model. Anorexic. Follows the instructions of the photographers and fashion designers or else they get replaced by a different waif thin fashion model.

So they are being paid to be an unhealthy level of skinny or else they will be replaced by another unhealthily skinny model.

Our western culture is not helping either. America seems to be really good at producing people with eating disorders.

America has become so obsessed with fast food that obesity rates have skyrocketed and now 4 out of every 5 adult Americans is overweight and half of those overweight adults are obese.

Historically, people don't get obese from eating regular food at home or the local ma n pa style diner. They get obese from eating foods they know aren't healthy and from not exercising. Food which is often cheap and fast. As a health issue it is effected by economics because people still need to eat to live, but if they can only afford cheap fast food that is available during the lunch break at work then they don't have a lot of options or choice.

There is another factor too. Lets face it, most Americans do not exercise. They don't even teach physical education in many schools anymore because politicians thought gym classes were too expensive, so they got rid of it. So instead the health care system has to pay for the dire consequences.

What Americans do like to do instead is invest money "get thin fast" schemes that don't work. They're gullible and think they can actually get thinner by not exercising or eating healthy. Savvy advertising and stupid/gullible Americans have created a multi-billion dollar weight loss industry that doesn't actually lose weight.

Everyone knows that Diet + Exercise is the only true way to control a person's weight and achieve a healthy weight, but so few people actually do it.

EXERCISE! EXERCISE! EXERCISE! EXERCISE! EXERCISE! DIET! DIET! DIET! DIET! DIET!

Gee, that sounds like a lot of work. No wonder so many people try to do some kind of quick fix that inevitably fails.

Eating disorders effect women most of all because of several factors.

#1. Many women believe in the myth that exercising will make them look masculine. Thus they are told dieting is the only way to achieve their desired appearance.

#2. Society expects women to be beautiful, but is contradictory about the methods used to achieve that beauty.

#3. Women are constantly bombarded with mixed messages about what is beautiful. Is it better to be skinny or is it better to have a big buttocks?

I can't say it enough. Its really the only true way to stay healthy. If you starve yourself, eventually the anorexia will start eating away at the muscle tissue in your brain and your hair will fall out. Don't believe me? Look at what happened to former supermodel Carré Otis. Its actually a common occurrence for anorexics.

And the fashion models have it worse. The poor women become neurotic from society judging them constantly and they are just starved for attention. This is why Instagram is so popular for fashion models. They crave the attention because it validates their existence.

Unfortunately this is also coupled with a higher than average suicide rate.

Something to think about.