Don’t Super Skinny Me
Last night while scrolling through program guide the title of one show on BBC America caught my eye: Super Skinny Me. Obviously, it’s a play on the now-infamous documentary ‘Super Size Me’ which chronicled one man’s month of living on nothing but food from McDonald’s, including every “super size” serving offered to him.
Only the BBC documentary works in reverse: two reporters seek to slim down to a U.S. size 0 (yes, zero) within five weeks by trying numerous extreme weight loss techniques, including food deprivation and over-exercising. Both women began the experiment at normal weight, apparently free of eating disorders. Five weeks later, that wasn’t true of either anymore.
Although both women lost 14 pounds each, only one of them reached the size 0 they’d both been aiming for. (Size 0, they explained, is currently the ‘dream size’ in Hollywood… it is also the same size of jeans that an 8-year-old girl would wear.) The woman who reached the goal was glad to go off the extreme diet, and two weeks later had re-gained 7 pounds… something which she was glad for, having decided that the super skinny look felt unhealthy.
The other woman? Well, she won’t be able to celebrate having reached size 0 but, instead, will be dealing with eating disorders triggered by the 5-week experiment. Evidently, the mental mindset required to pursue that kind of drastic weight loss in that short period rekindled psychological issues from her teenage years when she’d been overweight and miserable.
I must confess to being appalled that the show claimed it was trying to prove the dangers of extreme dieting while carefully documenting, almost in a how-to fashion, how each woman managed to lose so much weight in such a short period. Oh, sure, one of the women got teary as she described how “awful” she felt for girls who seem to celebrate their bony, super skinny frames… and yet that same woman threw a party to celebrate having reached size 0 at the end of the trial.
I’m not sorry to learn this show is over: as far as I’m concerned it was just one more way of continuing to promote size 0 as desirable, one more way to encourage women to deprive themselves until their bodies resemble those of prepubescent girls. The sad thing isn’t that one reporter whose eating disorders were triggered by the experiment — she, at least, got counseling throughout the process and had finally recognized, by the end of the show, that the whole pursuit of size 0 was “a crazy game” that negatively affected her health.
No, it’s the women and girls who watched that show and didn’t receive the counseling that I worry about, because you just know there are plenty of viewers who are now following the same methods the reporters used in their extreme weight loss experiments. Only, unlike those reporters, there won’t be anyone watching them day-to-day to stop them when it gets out of control.
aTags: bbc america, drastic weight loss, eating disorders, extreme dieting, extreme weight loss, food deprivation, super size me
Size 0??
holy cow. I have a niece who is naturally model skinny like her mother. Even she doesn’t wear a size 0.
Me, I’d be tickled to death with that 0 with a 1 in front of it!
Donna B.’s last blog post..The Darwin Diet
Comment by Donna B. on May 20, 2008 at 1:14 amI’d be happy with that one, too, Donna.
Meanwhile, I held up a pair of my 8 year-old son’s jeans and got nauseous looking at them. THAT is the “perfect size” according to Hollywood???
Sick.
Comment by Chubby Mommy on May 20, 2008 at 10:07 amI was lying. I wouldn’t mind the 0 with a 2 in front of it. I must learn to be honest, right? haha.
Hollywood mostly exhibits what happens when people with a size 0 brain are in charge.
Donna B.’s last blog post..Ted Kennedy Has Brain Tumor
Comment by Donna B. on May 20, 2008 at 12:36 pmThey do say that the brain requires carbs to function correctly, so if all of the Hollyweirdos are getting thin by cutting out carbs it explains quite a bit, doesn’t it?
Comment by Chubby Mommy on May 20, 2008 at 2:03 pmYou know, I’ve always liked BBC (well, BBC Canada, being up north and all) but I’m actually feeling slightly nauseous just reading your post.
Yesterday I watched a new Madonna video and my first thought was “Wow, she looks amazing for her age.” My second thought quickly followed: “No, she spends her life working on her physique so she can be impossibly thin, and that must get harder every year.”
Skinny used to be an 8. Now it’s a 0. What’s next? I don’t even want to think about it.
The Maven’s last blog post..The Maven: Frittata
Comment by The Maven on May 20, 2008 at 4:39 pmI usually enjoy BBC, too, and found the contrast between “Super Skinny Me” and Gillian McKnight’s “You Are What You Eat” to be mind-boggling. They can frame “Super Skinny” as a documentary all they want, but the ads for eDiets.com, various vitamins and makeup that run during the show reveal its real target audience and purpose.
Comment by Chubby Mommy on May 20, 2008 at 4:50 pmI have never understood the sizing of women’s clothing. Even when I was married to my ex-witch, I never went shopping with her. (Well, I did, but I entertained my step-children by reading Oz books to them. Entertained myself, too.)
And, when Fox News went too left-wing for me, I cancelled the cable. So I can’t relate to cable shows. And the BBC is virulently left-wing, so I wouldn’t look there even if I had TV.
But, while I was married, I went from 205lbs to 165 lbs, even though my step-children counted on me to finish their meals. My ex-witch was sometimes a very good cook and sometimes a very bad cook. I had to take in my Scoutmaster’s Uniform twice, and my suit pants once.
Over the years, I’ve gotten back to 200 lbs. At 6′1″, that’s not too much overweight. And I figured that it made little sense to let out 20 year old pants. I now have a tuxedo, two suits, three trousers, and two sport coats. I hate shopping, so that will do. I’m old enough that I have purchased my last car and my last suit.
Comment by J. Otto Tennant on May 21, 2008 at 9:38 pmHere here! Those sorts of mindsets are unhealthy and can only lead to unhappiness. When you approach weight loss with that sort of unhealthy mindset, you are only going to make yourself sick and miserable. Healthy, slow and steady weight loss as a result of good nutritional choices is the only way to go!
I love your blog… just stumbled across it. Keep writing!
emiglia’s last blog post..After the Baby: Where Did Your Get Up Go?
Comment by emiglia on May 23, 2008 at 3:11 pm8 year olds now a days don’t even wear size 0..
Childhood obesity “epidemic” makes sure of that.
A size 0 is too big for my 10 year old daughter, so saying it’s the size for an 8yo is a bit misleading. I’m sure it is for some 8yo, but my 10yo is average height and weight. My 14yo wears a size 0 or 1, my 16 yo daughter wears a 3 or 5, and I wear a size 2 or 4 (after recently losing 65 lb - started in a size 16).
Comment by SighsofmyLife on June 2, 2008 at 6:57 pmThose trousers that the journalist queezed into didn’t look like size 0 to me, nor did her body. Victoria Beckham - that’s size 0. It can’t look too good in a bikini. Most of the famous supermodels are size 4, which just goes to show how unreasonable a size 0 is.
Anyway, superskinnyme.com has done a good job explaining the different types of women’s bodies and how to lose weight in a healthy and constructive manner.
Comment by Dina on June 3, 2008 at 7:38 pm
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