health

JAM: One of these women is too fat. The other is too skinny.

By JAMILA RIZVI

Jennifer Hawkins is too skinny. Jessica Gomes is too fat.

So what type of female body is just right? This one:

 

Just right.

 

Oh and by the way, just a minor detail: this type of female body doesn’t exist in real life. It was created with Photoshop. Because no ACTUAL human female has the ‘perfect body’ according to the fashion industry whose warped view of what the ‘perfect’ woman’s body looks like has now officially reached Absolutely Bloody Ludicrous heights.

Introducing, Goldilocks Syndrome: where the appearances of actresses and models, paid to be beautiful, are relentlessly criticised by media and fashion people. If they’re not revealing a ‘pasta belly’ or attempting to hide ‘unsightly stretch marks’ then they’re ‘dangerously thin’ and have ‘taken it too far’.

They’re too fat. Or too skinny. Too gaunt. Too curvy. Too muscular. Too SOMETHING.

And these women will never be ‘just right’.

In the weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald, Andrew Hornery reported on the Goldilocks phenomenon, citing widespread online criticism of former Miss Universe and face-of-Myer, Jennifer Hawkins. When Hawkins took to the catwalk last Thursday to promote Myer’s spring fashions, she copped the usual ‘scary skinny’ barbs.

You can see her rib cage. She’s malnourished. That’s not healthy. Someone give that girl a burger.

Yet only days earlier, when new David Jones spokes model, Jessica Gomes pranced along a different Sydney city catwalk, she was forced to fend off a different kind of hater.

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Newspaper reports revealed that several attendees at the DJs fashion event were overheard making comments including “You’d think she would have gone to the gym before the show,” and “Can you see her stretch marks?”

STOP THE PRESS! Goldilocks has eaten both too much porridge and not enough.

August truly is the time for Australian fairytales because here are the two women in question:

Jessica Gomes and Jennifer Hawkins

 

Now is it just me – or are the bodies of these two young women EXACTLY THE SAME. And not jut a little bit the same but a lot the same. Their bodies appear structurally similar. Both are in their late 20s, considerably taller than average, have medium sized breasts, are very slim, very toned and very tanned.

Not to mention the fact that Jennifer and Jessica are both dressed for the beach (Jen even has a surf board! Wooh!) but have decided to get full blow dries and are wearing sky-scraper heels. Totes beach ready.

It appears, that in addition to their similar body shapes, these women share a common penchant for impractical clothing choices.

But in all seriousness. How is it that two women who have such remarkably similar frames receive opposite treatment by the fashion media, catwalk onlookers and social media users IN THE SAME WEEK?

Perhaps it is because in the crazy world of modelling, where sameness and conformity is valued above all else, the only acceptable female body type is one that has been digitally manufactured. The kind of body that has been nipped, tucked, smoothed, cropped and stretched beyond recognition.

A body that has been created by a computer.