When Fit is Fat...

Take a look at the picture to the left.

That’s pop-princess Britney Spears, rocking to her latest hit at the MTV Video Music Award.

As you might have heard, the critics weren’t too impressed with her performance. Despite recently struggling through her divorce, rehab, the head shaving malarkey and accusations of bad parenting, Britney’s performance got no slack from the likes of The New York Post or E! Online.

Now you’d think they might have attacked her poorly coordinated dancing, or her inability to mime. Both of those skills seemed sorely lacking from Spear’s sequence on stage. However, instead the critics are attacking her weight:

“Lard and Clear,” wrote The New York Post. “The bulging belly she was flaunting was SO not hot," hissed E! Online.

I’ll ask you again to take a look at the picture I posted. Does that really resemble a lardy lady? Does Britney’s belly really bulge? Of course not. She looks absolutely gorgeous!

But of course The New York Post and E! Online are not judging Britney against other women – real women. She’s being compared to the likes of 80lb Nicole Richie, or Size 0 supermodels who faint if they have to climb a flight of stairs. Unless there’s stringy muscle and angular bone showing through the skin, no woman is apparently beautiful.

No wonder between 2% and 5% of all Americans have some kind of eating disorder – a condition much more prevalent amongst teenage girls programmed with an impossible standard of beauty.

With more and more emphasis being placed on what you look like, rather than who you are, girls are being forced to feel more and more self conscious about their size and weight. They want to look like the women the media tells them are sexy. What nobody bothers to mention, however, is that the girls on television and the catwalk aren’t real or normal.

Britney’s pre-baby washboard stomach? She managed to maintain that with a regimen of 1,000 sit-ups a day. On line websites reveal that catwalk models often survive on diets of 600 calories a day or less – about a quarter of what’s recommended for a healthy woman. These women maintain their skinny appearance and abnormal muscle tone by living a lifestyle that’s totally unnatural and unhealthy.

Throw in the peroxide hair, the hours on the sun bed and the appetite suppressing effects of a daily packet of Marlboro Lights or a line of cocaine and the world’s most ‘beautiful’ are on the fast track to resembling burnt out crack whores by the time they hit 35.

It’s utterly disgusting and E! Online and The New York Post should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for writing what they did. Say what you want about Britney’s white trash mannerisms, her terrible taste in men, her poorly rehearsed dance moves or the fact that she couldn’t remember the words to her own song. She’s still Bikini Beautiful and that’s after popping out two sprogs in a short space of time. Try that at home, kids. It’s harder than it looks.

Look at the traditional icons of feminine beauty. Sophia Loren (consistently voted one of the sexiest women in the world even as she hits 73) or the ultimate American icon, Marilyn Monroe. You could use a lot of words to describe those magnificently proportioned women. Skinny isn’t one of them.

When it comes to the crunch, a woman who resembles a rake isn’t attractive. The most beautiful women are like finely designed Italian sports cars. All curves and no brakes. Hopefully there will be a backlash soon and people will start accepting that.

Not forgetting, of course, that there’s more to life than looks. Take Miss Teen USA contestant Caitlin Upton, an honor Student from Lexington High School, who had this to say when asked: “A fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?”

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our...”

I’m sorry, E! Online and The New York Post. I’m not buying into your absurd standards of feminine beauty.

A girl can look as gorgeous as you like (and Caitlin Upton does look absolutely gorgeous.) But there is nothing sexy about being as dumb as a bag of rocks.