[WillowTheWhisp]

OK, I was going to stay away from AccyWeb until people had stopped arguing about this because I have some real life things which have a bit of a bearing on some of the comments in here but which I don't actually want to go into in public, but following something someone said to me privately today I felt I want to come on this thread to clear up a couple of things from my point of view.

In Gayle's orignal thread Slinky said:

Originally Posted by slinky

Twice In this thread it says " hey guy's you don't have to be stick thin"....

What happens if I started one saying " Hey models needed, but you don't have to be a FAT cow to join"?? yes just as cutting!!

I would never call anyone a FAT COW or otherwise, so why do people think it is acceptable to call someone " stick thin, anorexic" ??

Now when I'd read Gayle's post and Rindy's post referring to thin models I did not think of naturally slim and attractive people, I thought of the so-called "super waif" image which is neither natural nor attractive. These aren't people who are naturally slim. Naturally slim people are attractive. These people Gayle and Rindy referred to are people who starve themselves almost to death to acheive an impossible figure which does not look attractive. I'm sure even the slim people on here and not just the 'fat cows' like me will look at those photographs with all the ribs and collar bones poking through the skin and in no way feel that these are images of attractive people.

Now normal people come in all shapes and sizes - some of us are short squirts with little fat legs and can't reach the top shelves in the kitchen. Some of us are blessed to be taller and oh how I envy them when they can just reach out and get something when I have to go and get a stepstool first. I refer to my own "little legs" when I can't reach things - or even struggle to climb onto a bar stool (Mez may rmember me doing that in the Stag) because I know I'm short. If anyone else refers to me as short it's just a fact. It's not an insult. Some people who are taller than average get a complex about their height. Maybe it's uncomfortable to be very tall - I don't know. Only a tall person can answer that.

I didn't, and still don't, see any reason why a naturally slim person who hasn't starved themselves into ill health to acheive a bustless bumless straight up and down bag of bones shape but who has a normal natural figure should jump to the defence of a hypothetical someone who has.

When some people see gorgeous dresses being worn by these models who only have the figures they have due to abusing their bodies they then buy something similar and when it doesn't look the same on them they assume they are at fault and try to emulate the model and acheive the same figure - with often tragic results. Young women have literally starved themselves to death trying to acheive something which they were never meant to be.

To those of you who are naturally slim and healthy then naturally slim is what you are meant to be and as I said to Garinda, if anyone called me a beanpole or a stick I'd be chuffed to little mintballs because it would mean I'd actually managed to lose weight, but it is probably an impossible dream for me due to a mixture of health problems which I don't intend to go into.

Please don't insult the intelligence of the fat cows amongs us by saying that people daren't insult us because it isn't PC. There is no legislation against fattism. In fact it has even been suggested that we are a hazzard to the public at large by our very existence in just the way that passive smokers cause others to breathe in their fumes. It has been proposed that we should be weighed when travelling by air and have to pay excess baggage. I've had insults shouted at me by ignorant kids and snide remarks made by ignorant adults such as "look at the size of that one." and "no wonder the chairs in here are broken" (in an office where I once worked, and no, I didn't break the chairs young idiots playing on them did that.)

We are told that we are ugly and accused of being sweaty, smelly and lazy by people who do not know us and in voices loud enough to be heard.

I would never insult a slim person. I envy slim people and would love to be one and if it was as easy as you think then why would I still be the size I am? I don't enjoy it. It isn't fun. Some overweight people may make jealous comments about slim people out of envy. I doubt a slim person would ever make a comment about a fat person out of envy.

However, although I would never insult a person of any size for being naturally that size, height or whatever; I do think it is wrong for fashion models to have been forced into trying to maintain an unnaturally skinny (and I choose that word intentionally as opposed to slim) shape which they can only sustain by living an unhealthy lifestyle.

For Gayle to have simply wanted to represent normal people of all shapes and sizes as opposed to the artificial model image and for it to have deteriorated into insulting people of different shapes and sizes is something I cannot understand. If you slim people have experienced insults from others in real life why should you then want to insult fat people here on AccyWeb when we have done nothing nor said anything to insult or offend you?

I hope this makes sense. I hope you can understand that the only people I have a problem with are the Kate Moss 'superwaif' types who live on snorting coke and smoking in order to stay impossibly thin. As a mother of teenage girls I hope and pray they never see anyone like that as a role model.