Right.. so a former anorexic is complaining about curves. Okay. That's so totally unpredictable.

mr divine, i had 2 pints of sweet cider happy hour £3.15p a pint, so yes i never waste a drop of my of my cider even though some bloke in his 70s sitting next to me was annoying me about whoo hoo look at the bum and tits on that blonde bint serving on the next table, see these girls have to do table service with trays with there bums and tits hanging out and now wonder why these old fellas get excited thats probably why they go in these bars.

Capitalism didn't define beauty, nature did, and always has done. It works for both sexes, the fact that Hollywood has always made money out of it is another matter. Consequently it seems both male and female are happy paying to view it!

Sciamachy,

You assume that I have never done tabletop roleplaying, nor never played a horrible warty orc. Those are mighty big assumptions. I'm a GEEK, remember?

@kay: They dont have tories in the US - Buckskins is a Yank and I am a Brit so we are not the same person. Btw, it was you that claimed it was biological research when you said "most men find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all". So you cant now backtrack claiming I misinterpreted it and say it was a Julie Burchill quote all along.

@EhtchTee: Still see your continuing with the tedious YouTube linkage. Whats worse is that your now including your poor daughter - does she know that her Dad is peddaling her out in such a fashion ? I will try to get through to you in your own language but this is how your coming across Ehtch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrVxcc2ZV0I

Ben Stiller did a great take on the Male Fashion industry; the same could be said of the Womens side, only more so. But Size Zero is not funny at all. Size 16 is ok to aspire to.

I dont see what all the fuss is about.
Can larger women find clothes that fit? Yes there are lots of retailers for the larger frame.
Can taller thin women find clothes that fit? There are only a couple of retailers worldwide that produce clothing for these women, even then you are paying a premium. If I didnt still do some modelling, I would be in constant debt.
As a 6/8 5' 11" woman, I can say that buying clothes without spending lots for designer fashion is hard.

when i was at oxford i saw laurie penny at a play and even now remember seeing it. this is evidence of its strikingness. i am male.

@Buckskins,
ooh did I hit a nerve there? First of all I use the word beautiful for both sexes,if you feel a bit emasculated or vulnerable when someone calls you that, well you shouldn't you are still a man whether someone uses that word or not to describe you. Second of all please do not use the excuse of science or biology for the existence of conventional beauty. Yes it is biology that drives us to be attracted to one another but it is not biology that makes a man feel attracted to a size zero, white, slender,huge boobs, straigh looking, abled bodied woman, it is society.
Third of all what has having bad breath got to do with our discussion of conventional beauty being a product of society, one is about cleanliness and the other is about brain washing. If you like conventionally beautiful women, fine go ahead there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, as i said everyone is beautiful but please understand the reasoning behind it and don't use it's biology bullshit as most of our choices are formed due to the type of society we live in unfortunately, that is just fact.
And yes Laurie is pretty, so what is your point? In the end what I am trying to say and im sure Laurie would agree with me is that if you fail to see the beauty in people that are not considered to be beautiful by society, well...let's just say you are missing out on a lot of things in life as this is a sign that you just accept whatever society tells you and one of the main things you are missing out on is the ability to think and be free as a man who does not think for himself does not think at all (Oscar wilde). hope I gave you some insight into beauty and you are going to make further research and see that beauty is not really objective but subjective you beautiful boy^_^

Absolutely amazing article which holds true. Thank you so much. :D Also, I LOVE your writing.

"Its just as bad for young men you know!"

Nah, I'm fine. Thanks anyway.

I take the point of the article, which is rooted in truth - adding the occasional normal- or plus-sized model to a catwalk or billboard is not going to rest of the problem - but I still see this baby step as a sign of progress. That doesn't make me complacent, and I think your article comes close to implying that it does.

'Curves', in fact, have always existed - as, for that matter, have love handles, cellulite, scars, dimples, fat thighs, chunky calves, bad hair, broad shoulders, big boobs, round arses and turkey necks. Shocking though it might sound, women with these ghastly personal attributes have just as much right to self-esteem and social status as young, beautiful catwalk models.

I know what you mean here, but lumping fat in with bad hair comes shade too close to fatphobia for my taste. I know that society thinks all fat is innately bad or unbeautiful but can we try not to fall into those traps in feminist writing, please?

Anyway, thanks for alerting to me that this season the fashion industry is nudging a smidgeon closer to reality. Honestly? I think it will help, a bit. The images surrounding us every day DO have an effect, as you've argued persuasively yourself before. Of course it's bigger and messier and more complicated than that, but I think it's a bit unhelpful to sneer at small improvements because not everything magically changes all at once.

@Findiglay "out of proportion"?! Okay, I can understand those people unhappy that their own bodies are out of proportion, but are you seriously saying that you'd only date someone thin because YOU'RE thin, that you think you'd look too skinny if you dated a fat chick?

You know, I think that kind of attitude is almost worse than those who only date thin girls because thin is supposedly normal *cringe*

Loving Buckskins' work, but he should be reminded that until it becomes compulsory to upload a genuine personal photo to accompany each post, there is no such thing as ugly here.  Online communities are a great leveller in that we can all be as beautiful as Buckskins claims to be, at least until some of our thoughts and words betray us and immediately render us ugly.

Still, if Buckskins would care to supply links to some personal pics he has online - his narcissism precludes their non-existence - I'm sure many of us here would be happy to bask in his pulchritude.

I may well be naive regarding some of these comments, but surely it's absurd to purely restrict feminine physical attractiveness to body shape.  If our reasoning became that reductive then why isn't ('scrawny') Gillian McKeith, rather than ('curvy') Nigella Lawson, the TV cook more likely to send men's hearts aflutter?  Sorry, but I feel Laurie's mention of coprophilia may have had some bearing on my invention of that peculiar juxtaposition.

Of course, the corollary of this line of thinking would be to consider a woman's countenance her predominant physical asset, yet facial beauty is just an inherited composite of serendipitous DNA.  At least it's possible to change your body shape by adhering to the simple formula of 'eat less, exercise more'.  Physiognomy, on the other hand, is (relatively) immutable.

Hmm, it's complicated being a bloke in a post-feminist world.

thats a bit snobbish of you kay my darling.and how many time have i got to point out that my spelling and grammar is atrocious, that i accept,so get over it kay you toff.

You're in good company then :-) Actually the pipe-smoking warty old lady comment reminded me of PTerry's Lancre Witches. They were pretty cool.

Stop you f**king whining.

@Marissa Oh har har! Let me tell you, it takes a lot of effort to find nice togs to clothe my glamorous, size 18 arse. Either there's dirt-cheap Primark stuff, the dirty little reminder of how strongly obesity and poor health is correlated with poverty, or there's very pricy stuff, or in between there's the little fat-ghetto section in some high street shops selling clothes designed for a size 8 body scaled up a few inches. If you think that it's just as easy to find clothes for a size 18 body as for a size 12 one you're mistaken.

Laurie - I'm still chuckling at 'roll up and see the amazing meal-eating woman' and I agree with you about 80% of the way. Catwalk fashion and catwalk aesthetics bear little resemblance to the real world, but I still think that a cultural move towards regarding slightly more averagely shaped women as something more than subhuman helps. I know personally that I feel better about my own looks when I see other fat women photographed in ways that show them being sexy/loved/chic. I also agree that there is a more pressing need to break the strong, persistent link between attractiveness and social worth which is applied to women so dizzyingly more than to men, but some degree of that is inevitable. If we are going to respond to people based on attractiveness, as I believe we are socially conditioned to do, then widening the parameters of what is presented as an attractive is a first step.

i was in a new bar that has just opened up by me the other day having a few pints of cider and to my amazement all the barmaids were young girls dressed up if you could call that in orange hot pants and tight tops showing there belly button, i felt quite offended and many men of all ages spent most of there time leering and making sexual remarks towards these young barmaids who looked like models,thing is if these girls were fat ugly munters would they of been employed as barmaids i dont think so,but i was so disgusted at the exploitation of these young women i walked out of this bar in protest.

Buckskins. Stuart.
These are not original thoughts.
I think you are under the misapprehension that they are.
They are the beliefs of bien-pensants.

But I am sure they keep you warm, like subcutaneous fat.

As Julie Burchill said only recently:

"Because girls are brought up judged on their looks more, we learn our league earlier, and we rarely make fools of ourselves by aiming above it...
"women just don't have that sort of Magic Mirror ("Who's the fairest of them all?") at home. And so many men, even ones with faces that surely only a blind mother could love (Chris Moyles, Chris Evans, Frankie Boyle), appear to have one, judging by the hilariously inappropriate way they assess women's appearances.

To me, one of the most interesting bits of biological research of the past few years proved that "most men find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all". Wake up and smell the skinny latte, lads. See that girl you like?...– step away from the Dream Girl. For all you'll get from her is the chance to make yourself look like seven sorts of fool.

Also Stuart....Dawn French and Ann Widdicombe? Really?
You're not sore are you that their famous and you're not?
Bless!

If only there were more men like Stuart! It refreshing to hear of a man realizing that these women are being exploited (sadly often willingly) and actually taking a stand by walking out of the bar.

*In regard to my comment above. I actually already live in a democratic society void of beauty, or at least any that entails much elegance - its called Scotland heheh!

The land itself is very pretty though! I'll always love the land.

Yep, It wasn’t my intention to come across as conceited or arrogant. I was talking about sexism and then mentioned something which doesn’t relate to the article, but has been bugging me for years. I was ranting about men, rather than praising my own attractiveness. Beautiful, average or ugly (if we can even think in such nonsensical terms), every woman should have the right to walk on the street and to be left alone by men. I was also highlighting that quite often it seems that men don’t really make a distinction between beautiful and ugly, they’ll harass any woman. Whereas the fashion industry has this clear-cut idea of what a woman’s body should look like.

As for my own appearance; I have a pretty face. Am I not allowed to say that? I also have a huge a bum, massive thighs with celluloid, a slightly flabby tummy, g-cup-igantic breasts and I’m quite hairy. I’m the kind girl who goes on absurd starvation diets, has days she feels too ugly to leave the house and constantly needs people telling her that she’s not fat but never believes it. There you go. I don’t think Buckskins would want me.
You can call me a hypocrite for stating that one can ignore this beauty ideal the fashion industry/the media shoves down your throat, when I obviously can’t...

I looked up that Julie Burchill and came across an article she wrote (about Madonna) for a trashy magazine. Hmm. How can you criticise “the fashion industry” when you write articles for magazines that mainly focus on beauty/fashion/diets??????????????????????????????????????????????????????I also didn’t understand her contempt for Madonna’s fitness. If Madonna wants to spend three hours a day at the gym then why shouldn’t she? The point is that women should not be pressurized into exercising that much, but that doesn’t mean that you should therefore look down on those who do. Anyway, Madonna needs to be fit, she’s a performer!!!

"You can't do a whole lot about how you are born, but you can do plenty about taking care of yourself."
I agree with that. No one needs to look like her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bSv1S-NdTo
But then there's chubby, overweight, fat, obese and morbidly obese. Big difference. Nothing wrong with being a little bit chubby, which is usually hereditary. I guess some people get fat more easily than others. I don't know, where do you draw the line?