Are You Kidding?!?

On a martial arts forum for women, an article about the body of actress Christina Hendricks (from "Mad Men") was just posted. In a nutshell, the article touted her curvacious, size 14 body as being the ideal for women around the globe.

I say the author of the article and everyone quoted in it should really get a hobby as they obviously have too much time on their hands.

The article features the same picture of Hendricks as I have here, standing there smiling for the camera. I'd be willing to bet that how the photo was going to be used was not what she was thinking about when she saddled up to the lens and smiled. The women I know don't really have a burning desire to be the standard "ideal" when it comes to how their body parts are arranged. That just seems like too much freaking pressure to me.

For years there has been backlash towards the rail-thin models that walk the runways of the world and appear in fashion ads. No woman really looks like that, the critics say (which obviously ain't true) and we shouldn't be "promoting" them as the ideal standards of beauty. But I'm sure the models see their roles as a way to keep roof overhead and pay their bills. See, they aren't the ones waving their bony arms and telling the world to look exactly like them. And if it is the young, impressionable tweens and teens we're worried about warping, blame to their parents for tossing them Vogue or Cosmo in the first place.

I see it like this: there is only so much about the body you were born to have that you can control. Of course you can eat right and exercise, but the length of your legs, the size of your hips (I'm talking bone structure here, folks) or the shape of your torso aren't things that can be changed, really. Accept that and move on. I'm not suggesting we all eat ourselves into comas (because that's just not healthy), but opening up a magazine and comparing your body to the bodies of every woman in it isn't healthy, either.

So, really - when there are so many other things to concern ourselves with, is this what women are really obsessing about?