It is well documented the body image issues that people, particularly young women, are having due to the unrealistic portrayals of “beauty” in the media. I am not typically exposed to these facets of the media, so whilst I was aware of the issue on an intellectual level, I’d never really been exposed to it.

Until the other day that is. I was in a waiting room and I picked up a Vogue magazine. Good grief! The women were all sticks! Where in hell did anyone get the idea that people find stick figures attractive? When in the history of our species has sexual attraction been linked to malnourishment? Here is a hint, magazine editors: anaemia and vitamin B12 deficiency are NOT sexy.

So we have a generation of women with body image issues because they cannot overcome the basic human desire to not starve one’s self almost to death in the hope that they will look like something that nobody actually wants to look at anyway. Is it just me, or is that really messed up?

It’s like the media has become caught in some sort of death spiral, where one magazine has a slightly thinner girl, so then the other magazines have to show even thinner girls to compete. Eventually they will reach the limits of what is possible with digital photo editing, and who knows what will happen next. I suppose it’s too much to hope they will come to their senses and show healthy people.