Chubbiness seems to be a big issue at the moment. Louise out of Eternal was on TV a few weeks back, along with with her idiot husband, to talk about going to size zero as an experiment. I’m no expert on womens’ clothes sizes so this confused me. I know a size 16 is quite big and I’d hazard a guess that models can fit a size 8 or 10 at a push, so surely a zero is about as thin as a bamboo cane? What’s the point in that? I never got to the truth because I was drunk and the whole thing washed over me.
As I see it, clothes sizes don’t mean anything to me. As far as I know, we chaps couldn’t give two hoots about the size of a ladies jeans, so long as she carries herself with a bit of style, or failing that, a bit of sauce. There are lovely ladies with massive behinds, and equally there are beanpoles who are effortlessly ace. Men are far more accepting of different shapes and sizes than ladies are led to believe, in my experience. Unless they are FHM or Loaded-reading men, in which case, why would a lady care what they think?
From what I could gather, the likes of Lionel Richie’s offspring are size double zero. Have you seen the state of her? Why is she a benchmark for slimmers? Surely she’s a brittle-boned warning?
Sunday night saw Superskinny Me: The Race To Size Double Zero transmitted on Channel 4, so a chance for me to catch up on what the devil all this nonsense is about. Two female journalists, Kate Spicer and Louise Burke, underwent strict dieting and workout regimes in order to see just how tough it would be to achieve this size zero look.
As they underwent the experiments themselves rather than interviewing genuine anorexics and bulimics, I found their methods somewhat cheap. Supersize Me (which this was clearly based on – have a look at that title) was an amusing documentary in that it used the daily munching of McDonalds not as its focus, but as an alarmingly funny way of holding viewer-interest whilst Spurlock gave us the lowdown on the crap McD’s put into their food and the the way they pump cash out of consumers. The food regime element was just a spine running throughout, to give us a bit of puke-action among the stats. As was his ridiculous moustache.
Superskinny Me missed this point and neglected to give us any factual information whatsoever, apart from a handful of moments in a Doctors surgery where the two journos were scolded by the medics, which was a direct copy of Spurlock’s formula. We learned a little about the methods used to acheive weightloss – too many colonics, no food, lots of water based ‘meals’ – but we didn’t learn who was responsible for making this tripe seem like a valid and healthy way to lose weight. There were no culprits to blame for inflicting this culture of starvation on its prey. No doctors, dieticians, Hollywood agents, models, bogus nutritionists… and it was all the more annoying for that lack of knowledge.
What we ended up with, after this paucity of information, was two priviledged, Chelsea based journalists moaning about how hungry they were. Burke was bubbly but slightly dim. If you ‘eat’ only water for a day you’re likely to go thin, so stop moaning about and lazing in bed complaining of a dicky tummy. As for Spicer, she was an ex-boarding school annoyance, relentlessly pursuing her story and having a great time flashing cleavage and skinny legs throughout.
I’m not sure exactly what they were trying to achieve. They tried diets and detoxes which were clearly going to make them ill, and they acted like martyrs when the sickness struck. It was hard to elicit any sympathy whatsoever, especially when they actually seemed to be enjoying the weight loss. Upon finally squeezing into a size double zero pair of jeans, Louise was clearly delighted. It became suspiciously clear that the ladies were beginning to enjoy their weight loss and new look. The aim was possibly to prove that weight-loss is addictive, but to me this stank more of two journalists who wanted a decent story abusing themselves to try and get it – and happy accident – they lose some weight into the bargain.
This is surely a deeply stupid way to try and make a point, not least because teenage girls without the Sloane Square apartment and network of shrinks on hand are clearly going to absorb these methods of self-sabotage and run with them. Brilliant. Well done ladies, you’ve just made the situation worse. I wonder how much you got paid?
The only real way to end the show would’ve been watching the two drip-fed girls in their hospital beds, actually perishing from starvation, rather than having a paid-for holiday in the dark side of diet. An enforced food-tube direct to the gut might be a bit more trying than a morning without solid food, so stop whingeing, you bloody idiots.
Watch With Mothers 
