Mommy I Want Plus Size Barbie

I just answered that question. Am I writing in French?

Are you suggesting that you have a vested interest in small girls? I don't think you grasp how insane your accusation sounds. Adults protect children. It's as simple as that.

You didn't address that point, you addressed a different point, the very essence of a strawman. Obviously you're not writing in French, but asking it rhetorically doesn't mean that you made any clear distinction of what you are actually peddling. Just about everyone else in this thread has took a clear standing on the issue, you're taking the standing of "I want to be outraged about something" and when called on it, you take offense.

As far as my vested interest in children's health, ya, I'm going to be having children soon. That means that if I have a daughter, she'll be effected by the decisions we make now.


But you are talking about fat and calories. Do you think that the global coordinates where the food is consumed have an effect on the flavor? A biscuit TASTES better in the south because it has more butter in it and on it. If it has twice as much fat as the CA variety, EAT HALF OF ONE.

I take offense because I have enumerated my position repeatedly. How you can have missed it is truly beyond my comprehension. This is from PAGE ONE:


That is the very essence of what I said in advocating that Barbie more closely resemble someone of a healthy weight for her height. Which I just bleeding wrote. I repeat, am I not writing in English? Or is it merely that you cannot read it?

I find it somewhat ironic that you complain about not jumping to the extremes of human behavior as guidelines and then you immediately assume that my opinion is floating at some furthest extreme. Stop interpreting your own ideas into my mouth; I've been very clear in my opinion and in supporting it.

Because size 10-12 might be a more common size than what she is, but it isn't more healthy. It's outside the medically accepted healthy weight range excluding some ethnicities. So, you're not promoting fat acceptance, you just think that an overweight doll is better. And if you agree completely with Liela's assessment, why would you then spend pages attacking people who have virtually the same viewpoint? Again, I ask, what point are you trying to make?

Edit: Minorities > Ethnicities

I honestly have no idea what size 10-12 actually is. I just assumed that a woman citing a figure would be in some kind of ballpark area for normal.

Who have I been attacking that agrees with me, though? The only thing I've lately been arguing is the claim that the impossible physique of Barbie (to say nothing of the hellacious fashion sense of Bratz) doesn't present an unreasonable model for little girls. You're the one who has gone off the deep end and apparently thinks that my objection to damaging role models somehow means I would advocate for equally damaging ones on the opposite end of the scale. Are you out of your mind?

Edit:
Honest to heaven, did I piss in everyone's collective cornflakes this morning without realizing it? You lunatics have been attacking me like I've been spouting obscenities non-stop and making barely comprehensible, ranting screeds against dark people and the CIA. I've explicitly been avoiding my more usual acerbic style and it has resulted in my being hung, drawn, and quartered because I dare to make a joke or because someone thinks I should be burned in effigy. What in seven unholy hells have I done that has pissed you off?

They also have a higher concentration of.... "BUTTER".

Actually I'm not, because there is more to cooking than the amount of butter one adds to influence quality/taste. Ask any professional homemaker or chef. Things like food prep come into consideration. So my statement isn't restricted solely to "I'd get fatter in the mid-west because of the calorie count of food" but also "the selection of food as well as the quality of food prep that goes in would influence me to eat more."

Metropolitan culture, in my experience, cuts a lot of corners when cooking that drastically effect the taste of food and it has nothing to do with "how much butter is added."

Anyways this really has nothing to do with the OP so yeah enough derailing...

EDIT: Also my post about southern/midwestern food was originally meant to praise the quality and taste not to spark a debate about food prep and the ounces of butter used. NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DEBATED.

My post was to point out the quality of taste is derived from the amount of butter the biscuit contains.

you realize you're saying something nearly "they are better because they are made with love"...

I read it more that he was saying that city bakers and cooks are more apt to use cheaper and less fresh ingredients. I'm not sure of the truth of it (I live in the midwest, after all, but in a major city, so...), but I suppose it might be difficult to get fresh dairy and the like in downtown Los Angeles without paying through the nose. There's also technique to consider in that a small-town baker would have more opportunity to bench-proof a dough whereas a large-scale city baker might have to rely on chemical leavening for speed.

Just a thought, anyhow.

Of course, the alternative could just be that California's foody culture is grossly over-rated and putting wheat grass or whatever in everything is not quite as yummy as half a pound of fresh, creamery butter. But that's my bias against SoCal speaking and I'll cop to it.

That's debatable.

I don't especially like the new age crap they spew out... WTF is actually in a vegan egg-white omelet?

Thanks you were more articulate than I, particular when it comes to a professional setting. Working in restaurants I saw the produce and meats restaurants purchased from companies like Sysco- It's not all that great or even food prep items that were frozen and used a weeks later.

I was also going at the domestic household differences in food. I have family in the Midwest and here in So-California. The way they cook is very different imo. My mom always defended her So-Cal cooking via: "I'm a working mom I don't have time to do all those things that you do." Basically meaning she improvised or altered recipes for faster cooking time, which didn't always yield tastier foods. Obviously every family is different too.

Jassik you can't win against them. They are arguing with different assumptions then you and so the conclusions are irreconcilable. Right now I am in Thailand on vacation and I can tell the Russians from the north Europeans and Americans easily. The size of their body. What is passed for acceptable is truly disgusting. I say let them have all the fat girls, I will stay with the skinny hot ones.

A homemade from scratch family dinner vs. a one-pan style working mother's dinner is not apples to apples, and it still doesn't address the main issue. It's not that people eat unhealthy food, it's that they eat way too much of it.

You know, I am vaguely interested to know, what exactly does a 10-12 seem to equate to you for a woman of, say, 5'6" in height, Jassik? As I said, I've no idea, not helped by the fact that I'm given to understand that dress sizing is a thoroughly arbitrary mess, and it has been weighing on me since you object that it is too much.

Let's just drop the food quality because that really has nothing to do with the topic.

I agree it boils down to portion control. But For some demographics they don't know how to eat properly and that boils down to ethinic/cultural eating habits.

A big concern for public health agencies in California is how Latino families eat, because they don't integrate fruits or vegetables into their diet. Their diets are mainly comprised of carbohydrates, fats and meats. Growing up in a Latino family you'll eat beans, rice, tortilla and a protein. It's very rare to see fruits or veggies and that's something DPHS battles in California.

No, at 5'6" a size 4-6 would be a more realistic size. Again, that's excluding certain body types that are related to ethnicity or athleticism. 10-12 for a woman of average height would be overweight.

This isn't a matter of vanity or me being shallow, we're talking about static metrics of health, not subjective standards of beauty. Obviously, someone being in their ideal weight range and physically fit doesn't necessarily mean crap about them being attractive.

The same goes for males. would you consider a realistic size for a male doll to a 38" waist and XL shirt? Should we make beer guts an acceptable standard of a healthy male?

I wouldn't put either gender up to an unrealistic standard, size 12 is not a realistic representation of a healthy female body, and it's incredibly dishonest to future generations to adjust the standards related to health to appeal to overweight people's want of acceptance.

http://www.americanapparel.net/sizing/default.asp?chart=womens.pants

Size 10 is a 32 inch waist, 12 is a 34 inch waist. That is f*cking huge for a 5'6" girl. If she was 5'10 or 6 feet and had broad shoulders / hips then it would be acceptable.

That being said, two dimension measurements are only helpful in a general sense. Height to waist ratio and width of shoulders and hips give a better guide for body mass. And honestly the best idea is to get fat % checked at anywhere with the bioelectrical machine. Its far more accurate then calipers and height weight.

American Apparel size chart is not accurate. General rule of the thumb is to add 20 to sizes. Ex: size O = 20 inches; 1 = 21 inches; 10 = 30 inches.

news flash:

butter makes things taste *** amazing.

Even at that scale, a size 12 is a 32" waist, which is well outside of what should be a normal healthy body.

And we're not even talking about the doll that is being proposed, it's more in the size 24 range, which is well into the obese category for any female that isn't 9' tall. I'm not even hating on overweight people. I don't have a problem with people being large, I think it's unfortunate, but I don't have any ill feelings toward them. It's just not a fair example for children.

I have to say that I find it interesting that you guys latched onto waist size rather than weight, what with how much noise you make about weight. Given you think that a man with a 38" waist would wear an XL shirt, I don't think you know what sizes people wear. I at least cop to the fact that I've no clue what size a woman should be.

I'm afraid that's patently untrue. In fact, Savael has mentioned several measures that are better, but they're not measures of health, merely of adiposity.

I'm not suggesting that we need fat dolls of either gender, mind you. I do want to be clear on that, but dolls are art, a reflection of an ideal or a reflection of the real, dependent upon the artist. One can argue in favor of Barbie as a picture of the ideal, I suppose, if one feels that "ideal" somehow encompasses "inhuman." If you saw someone with Barbie's proportions in real life, I suspect you'd find her disturbing, if not outright disgusting.

But you keep returning to this nonsense of equating lack of weight with health and it just isn't true. I've noticed time and again that you keep skewing to the furthest extremes possible and that seems to be why you missed the point I was making, namely that there's a lot of middle ground. First off, weight is not the same thing as adiposity and BMI and its ilk don't measure adiposity whatsoever. It's just a convenient number to spit out but it is no safe indicator of someone's physical make-up.

Moreover, adiposity is not the gremlin you seem to imagine it to be. There are a host of myths around that suggest having 20 lbs. of excess fat causes a large host of disorders ranging from heart disease to diabetes to cancer. The fact is that they do not. Skinny people can get diabetes (actually, weight loss is one of the symptoms of the syndrome, not that non-medical folk know it). Its apparent prevalence in heavier people is because of sugar and I've met more than a few skinny people who survive on an almost pure diet of sugar and white wheat and they're gambling every day. Fat doesn't cause artherosclerosis, either, nor does dietary cholesterol contribute meaningfully to bodily cholesterol (our liver makes more cholesterol in a day than even someone on a pure fried-egg diet could ingest). The ritual abuse of the colon by an overeater might contribute to cancer, but it's a much longer chain of coincidences than merely "Is fat = develops cancer." Hell, the thing most doctors won't tell you is that pretty much everyone who lives into their 70s will develop some kind of cancer. Pretty much every old man has an easily ignored form of prostate cancer, frightening as that is to contemplate.

You really are discussing a matter of vanity. Moreover, it's a matter of vanity that runs rather counter to a lot of our standards of appearance. Any man who is normal weight under BMI is either an ectomorph (meaning incapable of putting on bulk muscle) or weaker than a 10-year-old. God knows I work with these so-called normal men and they're more useless than the pot-bellied fellows who have actual muscle tone and don't hesitate an instant before picking up a 100 lb. cabinet that's bigger than they are. The BMI is built around people with no muscle which is odd since Americans, along with Germans and Russians, are pretty big on muscle on our men. As I've said, I'm far from an expert when it comes to women, but it is my understanding that a great many incredibly successful dancers and actresses (the sort of people who have to have muscles as well as womanly curves) are "overweight" by BMI. It's a ***measure and no valid kind of metric.

Yes, I know the CDC supports it wholeheartedly. Our government has also denounced eggs as unhealthy, supported a massively carb-heavy eating scheme, and seems to never suggest that people should walk to the grocery store in lieu of gassing up their SUV to go six blocks. I'm rarely impressed by our government's health edicts because they're so often manipulated by some lobbyist or another. I'm frankly amazed that phys ed is still on the school curriculum these days, though I've heard that it wanes more every year.

The standard of slimness you propose is extreme. Women with barely enough fat to harbor children and men with only nominal muscles. I suppose it's very European. But it's no more healthy than someone who is in the "overweight" category of BMI. None whatsoever. Studies confirm it time and again.

In the meantime, if it is unfair for children to see someone who is clinically obese or possibly just unpleasantly pudgy (enough with the dissembling, it is your standard of aesthetics that you're judging with), how is it any more fair to show them someone who is inhumanly slender, like Barbie, or inhumanly hypertrophic, like GI Joe?

Let's be clear, I'm not talking about an extra 20 lbs meaning someone is unhealthy, I'm using it as a rightful indicator of poor eating habits and lack of regular exercise. Being overweight brings a host of medical issues that affect people in an ideal weight range at a much lower rate. Issues like joint problems, back problems, liver and metabolic problems, and especially self image problems.

Being thin isn't an automatic low cholesterol key, either, though. The issue, as I've said multiple times, isn't about image or vanity, it's about teaching children good eating and lifestyle habits.

You are fixated on painting me specifically as some kind of chauvinist with a "no fat chicks" sticker on my bumper. I'm at a healthy weight and size and so is my wife and other members of my immediate family because we have good eating habits and exercise regularly.

If you want to sit on your butt and manage to stay thin, grats, but the vast majority of people who are overweight could easily be in their ideal range and much healthier by all metrics if they skipped one soda a week and went for a short walk 2-3 days a week. It's NOT about vanity or appearance, it IS about health. The two aren't always mutually exclusive, but that doesn't mean that health is a smokescreen.

Also, what medical qualifications in the realm of reproductive health for females qualifies you to make a judgement on what is required to bear children? Women in the 12-15% body fat range have near optimal reproductive health as a whole, and that is far below the realm of body fat you are supporting as "normal".

He's bullsh!ting, it's accurate. I use it all the time for conversion when purchasing clothing for my GF and myself (the male measurements). The "add 20" is a generic rule that's used to guesstimate a girls size when shopping internationally. International sizes are done in metric as measured around the waist, my GF has a 24~25 inch waist and I have to look up sizes in different country's and in the USA it's a size 0~1. Size 10 is not 30 inches but 31.5~32 inch's. Also sizes are measured differently in different places, waist, low-waist and hip all can yield different sizes and it's why the cut and style is important when determining sizes.

http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-Convert-Your-US-Jean-Size-to-European-Size-/10000000177631024/g.html

That same size 10 could be a 28 inch waist (good luck), 30 inch low-waist and 38 inch hip. So a girl with a smaller waist (28 inch) but a big chest / hip (Latina hourglass) could be a US size 10 though it's fairly rare to see that. What you most often see is a girl with the 32 inch "skinny fat" waist / low waist and a 34 inch hips wearing a size 10. The higher the size's the more outrageous it gets, but again it's all based on height, shoulder width and hip size. South America is where you'll mostly find those kinds of body types, not people descended from North Europeans.

Jassik you've been 100% on point, don't let them buffalo you. Anyone over 20% body fat is unhealthy, period end of story. Height / Weight / Waist are just generic measurements of health, they aren't precise but they don't need to be. They are fairly accurate when used on a general sedate population. Ultimately we're talking about sexual attraction which is not a "social construct" but a biological instinct created from millenia of successful males and females. 5000 years of society is nothing compared to a million years of successful evolution that resulted in a species being the top of the food chain across the entire world.

The scope of that last statement should instant sink any ideas of "fat acceptance", "thin privilege" and "fat women are beautiful too".

I think you've missed a point in here. I'm overweight according to BMI. But, at the same token, it would literally be impossible for me to ever not be. At my current body fat percentage, even if I reduced myself to 0% body fat (which, on top of being impossible, would also result in my immediate death), I would still be overweight. I am a mesomorph: I grow muscles without even trying. That I am put several thousand miles a year on my bicycle and work in heavy labor has only accelerated that.

If I was willing to do so, I could show you two photographs of me weighing the same amount (within about 5 lbs. margin of error) and could easily convince you that I had lost at least 50 lbs. in that interval. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to do so, so you'll just have to take it on my word when I say that height-to-weight is a useless ratio.

But Savael lands on precisely the problem with the BMI (in between his arbitrary and unhistorical claims):
Your happy measure of health as based on weight is essentially only accurate when judging people with virtually no activity level. I really want you to take note of this, Jassik: someone who exercises and is inclined to gain muscle (which means at least 60% of the population) is likely to weigh too much exactly because they are healthy.

At least in this you do make a valid point, but it is a very weak one. Joint and back problems are caused just as often by activity as lack of activity, dependent on age and circumstance. As a cyclist, my knees and shoulders give me all kinds of nuisance if I treat them wrong and neither has a whit to do with my mass. Being a skinny couch potato inclines you to things like osteoporosis and joint trouble in later life. I won't deny that carrying 300 lbs. kills knee cartilage, but moderation in all things and being 200 lbs. won't produce the same effect. A large part of my argument against Barbie has been the promotion of an unhealthy ideal (namely, anorexic thinness) and that's hardly going to make for an optimal self-image. At which point I reiterate my question:


As to your point on reproductive health in women... yeah, I'll cop to it, I was leading with a weak hand there.

Get off the train of BMI and weight alone determining health. Some people aren't built like others, that's fine. You can't base a standard off an anomaly. Being inactive and eating poorly have a direct impact on weight (again, we're talking about flabby couch potato weight) and overall health.

I still don't understand why people have to take the exception as justification for moving the goal posts. You're grasping at straws, nobody is saying that being 10-20 lbs over your ideal weight means you're going to die of fat cancer, it means you are more predisposed to many health conditions.

Incorrect. 10-20 lbs. is a negligible amount unless you're about 4'10". This is why I keep taking exception to what you're saying: you have a decidedly myopic view of how weight affects health.

First of all, you need to stop using the word "weight" when you mean "excess fat." They are not identical and I know you know that. Secondly, even 30 lbs. of extra fat is not going to reliably affect the average person. The ridiculous ideal weight I should be at as a man who is 5'8" would be something like 140 lbs. I'm presently 200 lbs., of which 20% is bodyfat (I freely admit that I have excess weight and am losing it). Even if I were to somehow lose all 40 lbs. of bodyfat that I'm carrying, which would kill me dead, I'd still be 20 lbs. above the so-called bloody "ideal." Moreover, I'm a long way from unique as upwards of 2/3rds of the male population can gain the kind of musculature that will render them "overweight." That's hardly anomalous, it just happens that the First World is full of lazy sods with no muscle tone who think they're healthy if they can pull on skinny jeans.

But you're the one who keeps using weight as a measure of health and I keep repeating: it isn't. Activity level is a measure of health. Body fat percentage is a better measure than body weight (although still imperfect because there are scrawny weaklings who weigh 150 lbs. but are at 20% BF just like me yet wheeze climbing five flights of stairs). Waist-to-hip is a reasonable predictor of health, but only in that it demonstrates where bodyfat is being stored (so-called apple vs. pear shapes, also known as visceral vs. subcutaneous, the latter being the feminine version and the healthier style).

I really would like you to respond to my question, though. I find it quite irritating that you've skipped past it when our motives are clearly identical.