I’m a chubby fella who writes a weekly opinion column and if those two things combined don’t give you a thick skin, then nothing will.
If you’ve never been the biggest bloke in the room you’ll probably never understand just how thick that skin has to be sometimes (and I do mean figuratively, not literally!).
When you look back on your school days, you can understand why some kids picked on others for something as silly as their weight. They’re kids after all, and they know no better. They don’t quite understand the social boundaries or implications that they will later in life.
What I don’t understand, and something I find myself totally uncomfortable with this week, is the finger pointing we do when we’re much older and (supposedly) more mature people.
And this time it’s not so much about the heavier set folk, but those who are accused of being too thin, even unhealthy.
Australian Fashion Week is on at the moment and there’s the usual obsession with clothes none of us would dare wear on a daily basis, being worn by people who don’t reflect the very different body types and sizes that exist in Australia and around the world.
The big debate of the week, however, has been surrounding the health of models with concerns that many of them are too thin, to the point of looking unhealthy and raising alarm bells among experts.
I really can’t believe we’re still having this debate in 2014.
I mean, seriously, in this overly politically correct world, how are designers and Fashion Week organisers still totally oblivious to the fact that something’s not right when you send girls strutting down the runway looking like some of them did this week?
I will say, however, that I’m concerned by the way this is being reported by some.
There is way too much focus on the girls themselves and too little on designers and Fashion Week organisers.
And in some cases, the stories are descending into offensive attacks on the girls themselves.
The Daily Telegraph ran a story this week on Australian Fashion Week with the headline “Shock at the parade of strutting skeletons at Australian Fashion Week”.
Wow. Just wow.
The story that follows, written by Briana Domjen and Elle Halliwell, goes on to call models appearing at the show “sickly skinny” and “waif-thin”, and said that girls in one designer’s show made another designer’s girls look “well fed”.
Model Cassi van den Dungen seemed to cop much of the criticism this week, even taking to social media to post pictures of her food on Tuesday.
That is the most telling part here – the fact that she would post pictures of her meals means that she was clearly affected by the story; a story that ran with no real purpose other than to point at someone and say “we think you’re too thin”.
A hard-hitting piece putting the designers well and truly in the firing line, even suggesting a boycott of further coverage, may have been more suitable.
Journalists can have no idea if a model is eating rightly or wrongly, is dealing with other health issues or what’s going on inside their head – and they should not be the subject of what is essentially bullying by the media.
There must be a better way to deal with what is probably a very legitimate story about the modelling industry than calling people skeletons, sickly and waif-thin.
We as a society seem so quick to be offended at the smallest of things, yet we’re quite happy to point fingers at others when it suits us.
Time for some perspective, folks.
Originally published in The Western Weekender