Wallis Simpson was wrong
Jan. 30th, 2007 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenWho she? The one-time Duchess of Windsor. She once famously said, "you can never be too rich or too thin".
Now some people, of course, will cheerfully and at length expound on the principle that there is much to be said for the larger female figure. I believe it's termed "BBW". (Personally, I'm all for acceptance of natural body shapes and so on, but I do think that the "FA" lobby sometimes err as far into encouraging unhealthy lifestyles as the pro-ana mob and arguably the fashion industry. Being obese is bad for you; it is not OK to be obese, any more than it is OK to starve, voluntarily or not. That doesn't mean that anyone obese is evil or must hate themselves, but face it, it ain't a lifestyle choice, it's a health problem.)
Anyhow, I have a well-documented fondness for the more slender or gamine physique. Indeed, a certain friend of mine, not unadjacent to the first hyperlink in the first line of this paragraph, used to regularly reduce an ex of mine to tears by telling her that "You're too thin!".
It need hardly be said that I disagree.
But recently, I thought that maybe I had experienced something of an epiphany. Idle curiosity led me to investigate one Ms Heather Sweet, better known to the world as Dita von Teese. (That website is a rather impressive fifteen years old and is probably not remotely safe for work.) I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alexmc brought it to my attention that she was once again available* as she had dumped her husband Brian Warner, or rather, to name his band, Marilyn Manson.
(Her stage name was chosen in honour of Dita Parlo, a German film actress of the 1930s.pingopark tells me that "Dita" is more normally a male name. The "von Teese" bit came from her being Playboy cover girl in 2002. The magazine insisted that she have a surname; Ms Sweet chose "von Treese" at random from the phonebook, Playboy misspelled it and she liked the result so much that she kept it. Fascinating woman. No, honestly.)
But anyway, my interest in Ms Sweet has at least provided my Mac with some interesting new wallpaper. No, it's NSFW either.
In fact, it emerges than Ms Sweet is in fact a svelte 32-22-33, 5'6" and 7½ st. Noel would probably think she's too thin as well. I invite you to go look at some of her pictures - in the privacy of your own home - after which I am sure that you will agree with me that, in this case, the bloke's a nutter, as Harry Enfield might put it.
One thing I found interesting is that the comment boards of many of the American websites featuring images of Dita contain predominantly two types of comment: variations on "phwoar", broadly, and on the other hand, "that girl is too pale, it's not natural and she looks horrid". This just happened to jar with something that I discovered while perusing the silly-news-stories section of Metro after reading Nemi: the name of a really quite staggeringly lovely new British supermodel, one Lily Cole. (Reasonably safe, that one.) Those eyes! [*Chews desk*]
This I actually find rather reassuring. My tastes have not, in fact, changed very much after all. But it makes me wonder what the sort of women I find attractive actually look like in the eyes of Noel or even Doug (who once said to me, with remarkable self-knowledge, that he likes the way thin girls look but he prefers the way fat girls feel, or words to that effect).
Then a post from Douglas informed me, laterally, as it were, that the very splendiddashing has started updating once again. He is Russian, I can't read a word of the posts, but I don't need to: it's a photo blog of images he finds pleasing. He doesn't take them - sometimes, I can identify the source - they just seem to be Stuff He Likes. There are strong recurrent themes of cute kittens and seminaked or nude girls, the latter of which is fine with me and the former over which I can just skip, but there are some great images in there.
Which leads me, finally, to the original point of this post, which is "What 'size zero' women look like to Noel". Which is, I suspect, something like this.
See? There really is such a thing as too thin, even for me.
Sheesh. At least she looks cheerful, but... Aieeesh.
Oh, yes, and the other thing I discover when innocently - well, fairly innocently - looking for photos of Miss Cole? That Marilyn sodding Manson is a big fan and is casting her as Alice in his forthcoming movie. Which proves two things: one, he has excellent taste, and two, manifestly, he must DIE!
* In a certain, very specialised and rather theoretical sense, anyway.
Now some people, of course, will cheerfully and at length expound on the principle that there is much to be said for the larger female figure. I believe it's termed "BBW". (Personally, I'm all for acceptance of natural body shapes and so on, but I do think that the "FA" lobby sometimes err as far into encouraging unhealthy lifestyles as the pro-ana mob and arguably the fashion industry. Being obese is bad for you; it is not OK to be obese, any more than it is OK to starve, voluntarily or not. That doesn't mean that anyone obese is evil or must hate themselves, but face it, it ain't a lifestyle choice, it's a health problem.)
Anyhow, I have a well-documented fondness for the more slender or gamine physique. Indeed, a certain friend of mine, not unadjacent to the first hyperlink in the first line of this paragraph, used to regularly reduce an ex of mine to tears by telling her that "You're too thin!".
It need hardly be said that I disagree.
But recently, I thought that maybe I had experienced something of an epiphany. Idle curiosity led me to investigate one Ms Heather Sweet, better known to the world as Dita von Teese. (That website is a rather impressive fifteen years old and is probably not remotely safe for work.) I think
alexmc brought it to my attention that she was once again available* as she had dumped her husband Brian Warner, or rather, to name his band, Marilyn Manson.(Her stage name was chosen in honour of Dita Parlo, a German film actress of the 1930s.
pingopark tells me that "Dita" is more normally a male name. The "von Teese" bit came from her being Playboy cover girl in 2002. The magazine insisted that she have a surname; Ms Sweet chose "von Treese" at random from the phonebook, Playboy misspelled it and she liked the result so much that she kept it. Fascinating woman. No, honestly.)But anyway, my interest in Ms Sweet has at least provided my Mac with some interesting new wallpaper. No, it's NSFW either.
In fact, it emerges than Ms Sweet is in fact a svelte 32-22-33, 5'6" and 7½ st. Noel would probably think she's too thin as well. I invite you to go look at some of her pictures - in the privacy of your own home - after which I am sure that you will agree with me that, in this case, the bloke's a nutter, as Harry Enfield might put it.
One thing I found interesting is that the comment boards of many of the American websites featuring images of Dita contain predominantly two types of comment: variations on "phwoar", broadly, and on the other hand, "that girl is too pale, it's not natural and she looks horrid". This just happened to jar with something that I discovered while perusing the silly-news-stories section of Metro after reading Nemi: the name of a really quite staggeringly lovely new British supermodel, one Lily Cole. (Reasonably safe, that one.) Those eyes! [*Chews desk*]
This I actually find rather reassuring. My tastes have not, in fact, changed very much after all. But it makes me wonder what the sort of women I find attractive actually look like in the eyes of Noel or even Doug (who once said to me, with remarkable self-knowledge, that he likes the way thin girls look but he prefers the way fat girls feel, or words to that effect).
Then a post from Douglas informed me, laterally, as it were, that the very splendid
dashing has started updating once again. He is Russian, I can't read a word of the posts, but I don't need to: it's a photo blog of images he finds pleasing. He doesn't take them - sometimes, I can identify the source - they just seem to be Stuff He Likes. There are strong recurrent themes of cute kittens and seminaked or nude girls, the latter of which is fine with me and the former over which I can just skip, but there are some great images in there.Which leads me, finally, to the original point of this post, which is "What 'size zero' women look like to Noel". Which is, I suspect, something like this.
See? There really is such a thing as too thin, even for me.
Sheesh. At least she looks cheerful, but... Aieeesh.
Oh, yes, and the other thing I discover when innocently - well, fairly innocently - looking for photos of Miss Cole? That Marilyn sodding Manson is a big fan and is casting her as Alice in his forthcoming movie. Which proves two things: one, he has excellent taste, and two, manifestly, he must DIE!
* In a certain, very specialised and rather theoretical sense, anyway.
