Anne Becker, anthropologist, claims that there wasn’t disordered eating on the island of Sigatoka, in Fiji, before 1995 (save for the very, very rare case). That, and their culture appreciated large-bodied people.
But then they acquired access to television. It was only three years before 11% of the girls on the island developed eating disorders and new insecurities about their bodies.
The majority, 83 percent of the girls, blamed their change in attitude on the media.
“Now we are feeling, we feel that it is bad to have this huge body,” one 16-year-old Fijian told Becker.
Why?
Assimilation. As the U.S. continues to assert its superpower status, developing countries get our exports — including eating disorders.
This is not an isolated incidence. Read more about it here.
Treehugger has a post up today about a something as lovely as it is green: Jo Meesters’ Ornamental Inheritance, a project in which the Dutch studio sandblasts old, used ceramics into gorgeous modern ones, featuring contemporary symbols like airplanes and architecture.
There’s a strange disconnect in the “logic” of anti-choicers that sometimes becomes apparent when they are asked to clarify their position: they believe that abortion is the murder of a person and should be illegal, but not necessarily that women who have illegal abortions should receive the same sentences that murderers of born people do. Rather than advocating a life sentence or the death penalty, then, for women who abort, they may suggest counseling…? Is it possible that, try as they might, they just can’t swallow their own ignorance, lies, and false analogies?
And the idea that they so avidly advocate for these policies without having considered the repercussions seemingly at all- that they’re genuinely stumped by someone asking them what the penalties should be of breaking the law if they have their way, and can’t hide their surprise at such an unfamiliar question- is just abhorrent. That so many “have never thought about that.” Witness the phenomenon by watching this:
What an unbelievable oversight. Have these people really not come to understand that criminalizing abortion makes women who seek abortion criminals? That by outlawing it, they would doom 1.3 million women in the U.S. to serious legal punishment each year?
Such faulty logic should be exploited at every chance.
Commenter ClapSo made a pretty dire prediction the other day, after reading this post, that turned out to be right on the mark:
It’s a shame isn’t it? Overweight people have become the “new smokers.” Now that the “experts” have “proven” that being overweight can be “caught” It’s only a matter of time before they institute a “fat tax.”
Now I learn that a hospital chain based in Indiana is charging employees up to $30 every two weeks unless they meet their standards for weight, cholesterol, and blood pressure. Only if they’re fat, though…there’s no mention of workers who are thin enough to warrant health risks.
Workers can attend free weight-reduction classes, and there are now regular competitions between departments to see who can lose the most weight.
“When we have birthday parties now,” he said, “people don’t want sugar-laced cake and candy - they want fruit and deli trays.”
Acknowledging that it could be partially the result of the new deductible, he noted that the county didn’t have to raise its insurance premiums this year and likely won’t next year.
Critics of the lose-it-or-pay trend say that companies that charge heavier employees more for their medical coverage are turning the health care system into a police state and, just as worrisome, are working off a false assumption: that it’s easy for people who are obese and have other health issues to change their situations.
The critics are correct. We simply cannot allow employers to claim this kind of responsibility over their employees. I mean, what, do they want to implement a company bed-time too?
Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a Princeton, N.J.-based employees rights group, called the trend “a very dangerous road that could lead to employers controlling everything we do in our private lives.”
“To penalize for things that are beyond some people’s control is just wrong,” he said.
Fox is not a legitimate news channel. They consistently misrepresent facts, manufacture terror, and slander progressives.
We’re fighting back by identifying and calling all of FOX’s advertisers. All of them. Particularly local advertisers who probably have no idea the kind of hatred their money is supporting.
This exclusion means that the report failed to account for the fact that such human rights violations as female genital mutilation, “honor” killings, female infanticide, intimate partner violence, sexual abuse and systematic medical neglect of girls were disregarded.
The significance of the omission cannot be overstated. It is a perfect example of why women’s human rights advocates still need to shout from the rooftops that women’s rights are indeed human rights. The violence faced by women in their homes and communities is not separable from the state of their nations.
Antique looking books seem perfectly harmless until someone walks by, then the middle book slides out toward the victim as if it will fall from the shelf. Books also emit spooky sounds for a totally haunted effect.
