Posted by Loulou on Mar 20, 2015 | 4 comments

Is this healthy?

Recently a friend of mama’s was telling her about another friend who had quoted Mrs. Simpson (king-stealer, remember her?) as saying, “You can never be too rich or too thin”, the friend having had eating problems all of her life.

Questionable observations, both of them. But let’s get to the “too thin” part, which is disturbing mama no end because a young woman in her exercise class is appearing to waste away, day by day, and mama doesn’t know if she should say something or talk to the young woman or just keep out of the problem and hope for an improvement from some other source. Tricky question.

Certainly, one can be too thin. Pathologically thin. Painfully (literally) thin. Desperately thin with nowhere to turn. One can say, “Well, all she or he, because there are “he”s now, too, has to do is eat more and he/she will get better.” But that’s an impossibility. Anorexics cannot “just eat more” because they often do not see that there is a problem until too late.

As the French government and Vogue magazine (finally) were attempting to set the body mass index for models at 18, insisting that there be guidelines to encourage the fashion industry to monitor their models and insist on a healthy weight, psychologists everywhere were examining just how complicated anorexia is, citing information for young girls on the Web that says that thighs “must have a space between them and not touch when standing straight and that stomachs must be concave.”

How on earth have we come to this? How have we come to being fearful of our bodies taking shape, of hating our bodies (and ourselves) in any state other than that of the Auschwitz prisoners in WW II? Where has a society gone astray when it lauds magazines for women that show horribly ugly sticks with clothes on to be the ultimate beauty goal for a young girl?

Well, Tuxedo kitties are genetically a bit rotund and mama watches my food, that’s for sure, but I’m a CAT, not an anthro, and if mama’s friend continues to lose weight…well…who knows where that might lead?

I wish I could talk to young people about how nice it feels to be in a healthy, shapely body like ine and how dangerously close to disaster they are moving by swallowing (no pun intended) the terrible messages of our fashion magazines and those of their very own peers.

And I have to add, mama did not catch papa’s attention many years ago by disappearing when she turned sideways…au contraire!

I LOVE being a little roly and a little poly!