November's Vogue arrived at Shiny Towers today, and being a bit delicate after last night's Mobile Choice Awards I celebrated getting into work half an hour early with a bagel and a flick through it. Having always had food and weight issues which I've long since admitted and faced up to, I was drawn to an article by Alex Bilmes, features director for GQ magazine, about the reaction men have to women's weight issues.
This was an irritating article on almost every count. Firstly, it brushed over any seriousness quite deliberately like this: "We don't want you to suffer. And we think you are suffering. That's the serious part over with. Phew, huh?". Phew? The serious bit is over so our weak little minds can relax? Nice going, Alex.
Leaving that aside, the article was tired, tired, tired. We know men don't want beanpoles, that they prefer the "Cruzs and Beluccis" (well, we know this if we assume that all men have exactly the same taste, which of course they do, don't they?). We know that equally they're probably not that keen on people being life-threateningly fat. And?
What does it actually benefit us to know what men think? We think we care about what they find attractive but, as Bilmes - to his credit - points out, we actually care far more about what other women think. Some of us will make more effort to impress a group of girls than our own boyfriends because we figure if we're that critical about them, they've got to be thinking we're some misshapen hippo of a girl. I've done it. Some of you will have done it. But it would be ridiculous of me to suggest that all women have the same worries; as ridiculous as Bilmes suggesting that all men have the same taste in slim-but-curvy women (except the Internet fatty-chasing weirdos he makes a brief, dismissive aside about).
I'm not sure myself what I thought this article would tell me. I read it hoping it would be about a man's informed or interested take on the size zero debate - what is healthy? What is normal? What worries does this man have? But that was despatched in favour of telling us how incredibly boring our neuroses are. Of course they are. They're neuroses. As Bilmes points out he has boring neuroses of his own. So why zero in on the weight neuroses and complain about how incredibly bored they're making you? Because all women have them, right?
No woman can enjoy a three course meal, ever, according to Bilmes. So I must have been someone else at that awards dinner last night, as must the girls around me, many slimmer, some fatter who were tucking into the meal with every sign of enjoyment.
Listen up, Alex. You can't say that the serious stuff doesn't matter and then tell women how crap and dull our worries are. If our neuroses do impinge on our lives so much that a simple plate of food becomes torture then that is a bloody serious issue. If all the women you spoke to were as scary as you made them sound then you know some really troubled women and need to seek friends and activities (and perhaps professional help) that will help them be happier and more confident. Some bloke telling them they're dull and it's okay if they squidge a bit (but not too much, yeah?) is not helpful.
I'm sure he thought it was reassuring. But it was just another sign of how women hating themselves is being normalised by society.
Alex Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny. She drank electric blue cocktails last night which may explain today's intolerance to perceived nonsense.
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