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Chloe Marshall: Finished 2nd Place in Miss England
Hexmage-PA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I thought this might be an interesting diversion from the election/religion/pop-culture threads that flood the Debate and Discourse boards.
Chloe Marshall became the first size 16 Miss England finalist several months ago, and ever since people have debated on whether a girl her size should be in a position to become a role model for young girls. The Daily Mail in particular has expressed disgust, going as far as to call her a "fat, lazy poster girl for ill health".
In the article, the author (and former Miss England judge) berates the finalist for her goal of making larger women feel good about themselves, reminding readers of weight-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
Personally, I feel the author is wildly overreacting. According to the article, Chloe's BMI is 26. That does put her into the overweight range, but just barely. Regardless, the author discusses her as if she is all but guaranteed to develop diabetes, heart disease, and cancer all at once. I also doubt that having a girl Chloe's size as a finalist will cause British girls to suddenly embrace their love handles.
Chloe Marshall became the first size 16 Miss England finalist several months ago, and ever since people have debated on whether a girl her size should be in a position to become a role model for young girls. The Daily Mail in particular has expressed disgust, going as far as to call her a "fat, lazy poster girl for ill health".
In the article, the author (and former Miss England judge) berates the finalist for her goal of making larger women feel good about themselves, reminding readers of weight-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
Personally, I feel the author is wildly overreacting. According to the article, Chloe's BMI is 26. That does put her into the overweight range, but just barely. Regardless, the author discusses her as if she is all but guaranteed to develop diabetes, heart disease, and cancer all at once. I also doubt that having a girl Chloe's size as a finalist will cause British girls to suddenly embrace their love handles.
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But seriously, the article is ridiculous. If it's a trade off between "slightly increased chances of heart disease across the country" (I'm not saying that weight gains only slightly increase the chances of heart disease but that I believe that the effect that Marshall's celebrity will have is minimal) and decrease in the pressures of body image amongst young women, then I'm all for the latter.
There are extremely significant social pressures on young women to have a particular body, to see someone celebrated for both their femininity and beauty who isn't size double zero is a good thing. Less pressure, leads to happier lives which is good.
The problem with the overweight girl isn't that her BMI is 26 instead of 20 and she had the guts to compete all the way to the finals. That is commendable. The problem is that she is showing young girls that it is not only OK but also fashionable to be overweight, that it is acceptable to be out-of-control when it comes to eating if you exercise enough. This is ridiculous, and is precisely the wrong message to give. It's an attempt to knock down one harmful message with another.
Nice strawman.
It's not about personal worth. It's about health.
And as Apothe0sis mentions, I think the positives of the situations are much more than the negatives.
It's not about health it's about quality of life.
Life isn't worth living if you're fat and ugly, Apo.
Which is why we should all take Thin Thin.
Health is one of the most important factors in quality of life measurements.
I know I was much happier when I weighed 95 pounds and my body started to eat its own heart.
She's overweight, not one of those 500+ lb people you see on Maury Povich needing to have their house wall knocked down to be craned over to the hospital.
But I digress, the beauty pageant is an outdated idea in my opinion, and has no real use that promotes it's continued existence.
Quite honestly, for a contest like this, they should put the entry area on the top floor of a tall building and make all prospective contestants go all the way up the stairs withing a certain amount of time.
What this woman is doing is saying you can be sexy and a bit chubby, not that you can be fat and perfectly healthy.
Casual Eddy wins the thread.
So the idea that beauty pageants promote health considering the average number of eating disorders make up tricks used really is an empty contention.
That is precisely the problem: she doesn't say anything about health. She isn't saying "hey look, you can be overweight and beautiful, even though it's significantly less healthy than being of normal weight." The first part is fine, but omitting the second part is just plain harmful.
It's like selling someone a tool and saying "here, this tool gets the job done just as well as the other tool" but neglecting to mention that it is twice as dangerous to use.
How so, exactly? I'm not disagreeing; I'm must wondering what specifically you mean.
Because most people take life direction from beauty pageant models....
Are you mad she hasn't endorsed a presidential candidate either? I mean sure she's British, but if she has a responsibility to tell people what to do then she has to.
I'm a bit confused: Do you mean for her specifically or for any overweight or obese person?
Is it significantly more dangerous to be her weight than to be anorexic?
I mean, these pageants don't encourage health in the first place. So what's wrong with giving people the idea that more than one body type could be sexy?
Really, I wish there was a short beauty pageant winner, I feel bad for my short friends.
Are you denying that beauty pageant models are in a position to affect millions of young, impressionable girls?
This is irrelevant. Please stop.
Also, she has a really tiny head.
Like I said, I am denying both ends of the spectrum, and I am criticizing this overweight girl for trying to replace one harmful message - that you have to be anorexic to be considered beautiful - with another - that being overweight is not undesirable.
I am not really contesting this claim, as I think being underweight is bad too.
But I'd like to ask for a citation.
True, but there are a lot more overweight people than underweight people.
Chloe is no where near comparable to an anorexic woman. As I'm sure I'll have to say 400 more times to you she isn't a quarter ton heart attack waiting to happen.
Maybe I'm naive, but I'm pretty sure genetics has a shit-ton more to do with how fat kids end up then what a model looked like on the telly when they were little.
Are you counting developing nations in that equation?
If you're supposed to be an incredible specimin of health, you should probably be neither.
I'm talking about the nations that matter (that is, no).