Laurie and Debbie say:

Not only doctors, but diet groups, advertising producers, and casting directors everywhere are smugly taking credit for your transit delays.

Asim Nelson, a [New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority] emergency medical technician, told the paper that fainting dieters topped the “sick customer” list. … Although the agency doesn’t keep an official record of the nature of each rider’s illness, the [Metro] said that an average 395 delays each month are caused by sick customers.

A spokesperson for the American Medical Association (might have) said: “We’re especially pleased that so many New Yorkers are taking our advice, and protecting their health. We think that approximately ten delays a day is a good start; our goal, however, is at least 100 delays a day. We also need good data from other cities to make sure we’re on the right track (so to speak). After all, it isn’t only a sign that more people are dieting; each delay keeps everyone else on the train away from food just a little while longer.”

In the meantime, a spokesperson from the transit authority (might have) said, “We’re seriously considering taking a leaf from Victorian England and installing ‘fainting couches’ in the last car of each train.”

So remember, all you have to do to ensure a safe and healthy transit trip, inside or outside New York, is just not eat.

Thanks to Betty Rose for the link.

feminism, dieting, fat, body image, size acceptance, transit, New York City, Body Impolitic

Laurie and Debbie say:

According to the New York Times, at least a segment of the porn industry is showing real women. In an article on older women in pornography, journalist Sharon Waxman says: “She looks like what she is, an attractive 50-year-old, with eyelids and cheeks that have succumbed to gravity and concentric circles of rippled skin on her belly from childbirth, three decades ago, and from dropping 38 pounds this year.” That sentence could apply perfectly to models in Women En Large.

The porn star in question is De’Bella, or Debbie, and here’s what she looks like:

The whole article is interesting and surprising: director Urbano Martin says, “The market for beautiful, airbrushed young women is oversaturated. This is more normal people, more meat on the bone, like what you have at home.”

Of course, many factors apply here: the professionalization and routinization of high-end pornography; the explosion of home-grown pornography; and the availability of virtually every niche desire on the Internet, among other factors.

Nonetheless, we see something very encouraging in this shift. In one important sense, older women are “real women.” The sagging caused by gravity and the scars and weight shifts caused by life start early. By our mid-thirties, even the most conventionally beautiful women rarely still look like teen idols. Until now, the only push has been to keep those looks at whatever cost. Get plastic surgery, use Botox, choose your clothing with care, and never ever let him see you nude in good light. That push is all still there, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon.

At the same time, if young men are learning to eroticize aging, one thing that means is that they’ll be able to like how their contemporaries (wives, girlfriends, sisters) look as they age. And since (for better or for worse) what men like to see influences how many women feel about themselves, this can only be a good thing.

Thanks to D. for the link.

sex, older women, Body Impolitic

pornography, aging, feminism, body image, sex, older women, Body Impolitic