By JAMILA RIZVI
Jennifer Hawkins is too skinny. Jessica Gomes is too fat.
So what type of female body is just right? This one:
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.
Top Comments
Can I just point out for one second, that it isn't the fashion industry passing comment on these womens weight IT IS THE MEDIA! The fashion industry has nothing to do with these nasty comments.
Just wondering - what is so unrealistic about the female bodies in the first picture? They look pretty in proportion to me, and not scarily skinny.
In fact, they're not that different, to my eye, from either Jen or Jess in the pictures below - it's ridiculous to say that that body type 'doesn't exist in real life'.