and little cancerous tumors turn me on.

here's a little chunk of elle magazine, as reported by jezebel and found on rachel's blog:

You know that whole thing about how being superskinny is an ideal originated by the fashion industry and perpetuated by female competitiveness and like, totally NOT AT ALL what men are interested in etc. etc.? Well that's bullshit, says a story in the March Elle by Amanda Fortini, a 5'6 woman who dropped to 100 pounds a few years back. "Many men, I quickly learned, really do like frighteningly lean women, whatever they may claim to the controversy. As an average, medium-size young woman, I was unremarkable, innocuous. As a skinny slip of a thing, I was something of a sensation. In restaurants and at parties, men flirted at me extravagantly." Men in media and literary circles hit on her frequently and audaciously, (one of them with the awesome line, "You remind me of a heroine from a Joan Didion novel." (You know, "all bones and big eyes.") "As a male friend once put it to me, semifacetiously," she writes, 'A little anorexia is hot.'"

you know, a little cancer in a man was always more my thing. but what do i know?
if a man said that, a woman would probably run for the hills. what a sick fuck, she'd tell her girlfriends, as she repeated the must absurd and disturbing thing she'd ever heard. but she hears that a man gets a little hot for just a little anorexia and the refrigerator goes out with the trash on sunday night. and then, of course, the friends follow suit; it's a competition and a constant comparison party.
here's a newsflash for you, women: there's no such thing as a "little anorexia". you can't just pick it up like atkins and drop it. it's not about stopping when you hit your goal. this is not a lifestyle choice. it's a disease. a real one! and hellish, and cruel, and unstoppable. it's merciless.

there is nothing in this life worth dying for. we're born, we work and create a living (keyword: living), we raise children and teach them how to create a living for themselves, and we pass. and we make weight a factor that determines our worth during our short time? we cut our time short, and risk our ability to reproduce, and to create that living to look like skeletons because we think people will like us more if there's nothing to us. well, anyone who thinks that is no prize. and let me tell you, that's a relationship that's heading downhill from the start.

how did this start. why is the self-worth of our society based on how low the number on a piece of metal is? does anyone else realize how ridiculous this all is? i just keep wondering if there's a time in the future where weight isn't something we so willingly kill ourselves over and the diet industry isn't worth about as much as the porn industry. (that's not a supported fact, by the way...don't quote me on that.)

i highly recommend reading rachel's take on it @ the-F-word.org. she's a phenomenal writer.
oh, and by the way, the woman from the quote... it turns out she wasn't anorexic. she had a parasite. that's pretty hot, too. mm. as one of jezebel's regulars said, looks like we're all just a tapeworm away from beauty.

sidenote to elle magazine: congrats. you've made your way onto pro-ana site lists of "great magazines to subscribe to for 'thinspiration'." i hope you guys are basking in your thriving publication. just be careful with your models... they're fragile.