Reader comments

I have gotten a couple of negative reader comments lately, and I have debated whether to respond to them. For now, I will just tackle the negative comment I received today:

in response to my "Say hello" entry:

ugh, yes Jaslene is skinny. But, it ticks me off how you said America's Next Top Model is showing girls that this is the image of beauty. How dare you to say she is not beautiful. Skinny girls have self-esteem too. Not to mention that Jaslene had confirmed that she does not ave an eating disorder and she feels sorry for the girls who do. I'm sick of people calling others out for being skinny, it's a natural thing for her and if she were to try and change that for your "image" of beauty, she would be doing exactly what anorexic girls do. Do not think of well I'm only saying this because I'm skinny. I'm a 14 year old girl who is five foot five and 160 pounds. I've got curves and I love them and I also love Jaslene's body. Calling her out for her body makes you just as bad as anyone else.

In no way am I saying she is not beautiful. My point is that overall there is a trend for models to be super-skinny and often anorexic. This promotes a lot of negative things, as I talk about in other entries. It is not about one individual model, but about larger trends that are going on. I am absolutely not saying that very skinny people cannot be beautiful. In fact, that goes completely against what I am saying with this website. Of course skinny girls have self-esteem, too, as you said! I think people of all types should be celebrated, as opposed to how it is now, where it seems like most models have nearly identical body types. I would love to see models of all shapes and sizes (and colors and everything else.) Unlike what you said, I do not "call people out" for being skinny, and if that is Jaslene's natural body type, of course she should not try to change that just to fit in. If I were to see her on the street, I wouldn't think, "oh, she's anorexic," or have a problem with her at all.



We continually see images like the above in fashion magazines and on the runway. In this sense, it was predictable that a model like Jaslene would be chosen as the winner. The fashion industry promotes this type of image, and that has been shown to contribute to the development of eating disorders and low self-esteem. Also, in case it isn't clear, I have empathy and concern for those suffering from eating disorders, not condemnation. Anorexia is a horrible disease that I do not like to see being promoted, and that is why I post about it. Also, I have never said that these images cause eating disorders, which have important psychological and biological components.

"Many researchers in the field use the metaphor of a gun to explain what leads to the onset of an eating disorder. According to this description, first coined by Dr. Cynthia Bulik of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, genes load the gun and the environment pulls the trigger." -- Kimberly Conniff Taber

Thanks for reading.