coelasquid:

cutebruiser:

It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that I feel it’s a pointless distinction to make. Only really shallow people (such as Hollywood execs) would ever think there was a problem with Ms. Hendrick’s weight. I just think it’s pointless to have a discussion about “good fat” and “bad fat”.

Except that abdominal fat is more dangerous than hip and breast fat and it is entirely possible to have thick hips or thighs and be much more healthy than someone who has the same amount of fat distributed through their midriff. Big hips won’t get you diabetes, big deposits of abdominal fat will.

If you have two 5,6” people who weigh 160lbs, one could have a 26” waist, wide hips and a big bust, one could have a 33” waist and a boyish figure. Both people could average out to a size 10 or 12 once you account for all three measurements, but would have extremely different figures. Both would be classified as “overweight” by BMI standards even though only one is even close to being unhealthy.

The BMI was a product of insurance companies, it’s a very poor barometer of actual wellness as it was designed so they could ding more people for being “unhealthy”. It provides very unrealistic standards of what amounts to overweight, so people end up with a skewed idea of what exactly “overweight” means. This is dangerous, because it can lead perfectly healthy people to believe they have a problem and push themselves into a body type that IS unhealthy for them, as well as people who take it to the opposite extreme, and ignore signs that their body is dangerously out of shape because they don’t know where to find reliable health information. This applies to people who are naturally under and over weight alike.

Just to specify, this isn’t about Christina Hendricks, but rather body image in the media in general. When a startlet loses weight, people tend to say “she’s doing it for health reasons” because it sounds less shallow than “She’s doing it because she wants to be thinner” (which, hey, is a valid reason, it’s their body), but perpetuates the idea that the body they had before was unhealthy because it was curvy and that ANY kind of fat is bad, not because they had the kind of fat deposits that are actually detrimental to your health.

Can you do a citation on the stuff about abdominal fat and the BMI origins?