We don't really care about Mischa Barton's cellulite, so why do we still look at the photos?

Just for the record, I couldn't give a shit about Mischa Barton's or Fergie's thighs or Keira Knightley's weight. However, it appears that the media definitely thinks otherwise. I really don't want to get into why The Daily Mail is the worst newspaper of all time, or why The Times should really lay off telling us how much Mariah Carey's legs and Dolly Parton's boobs are insured for. (As my fingers may fall off.) But I'm surprised that to some extent, even The Guardian is hopping on the "let's talk about everyone else's bodies" bandwagon by having Hadley Freeman answer some woman's inquiry about "what's going on" with Bill Clinton's hair.

I hope that all of us are on the same page, and that we're not kept up at night by pondering Mischa Barton's *cellulite* or Bill Clinton's hairstyle. I think that most of us are guilty (myself included) for clicking on these stories when they're featured on Perez Hilton and Femail simply because they are there, and there is some sick part of us that wants to see what all the fuss is about. If bloggers and *journalists* stopped posting stories and photographs like this, we would even notice that they were gone?

The latest term for this "OMG LOOK AT HER FAT!" trend is apparently called Body Snarking. It sounds accurate enough, but what bothers me about it is that giving it a "new" name makes it sound as if it is in fact a new thing, which of course, it is not. It is very, very old. Women (and men) have been doing this to each other for ages, it's just over the past few decades that people have been getting paid to bitch about the silly celebrities that dare weigh more than a feather.

Jezebel were recently praised by some perky news anchor on Fox News for not participating in "body snarking" and for being a positive, safe place for women. While I don't really agree with that, I think it should be pointed out that feminism in general has been serving as a safe place for women for decades, and that many feminist - even if they don't call themselves feminist - bloggers have also managed to not ridicule other women's bodies for years, as well.

Not all of us enjoy tearing other women's appearances to shreds, but it would be fantastic if we could all get to a point where we didn't feel the need to click on a story about another woman's thigh or weight.

Cate Sevilla is a freelance writer in London and regular contributor to Dollymix.

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