Keeping Women Weak

Recently, two articles stood out to me because of their diametrically opposed views on the same subject.  I'll start with the one with which I disagree. 

Getting Models Into Fighting Shape

For models, the former boxer Michael Olajide Jr. is the heavyweight of trainers — the go-to guy for girls who have to get runway-ready in a hurry.  For this fashion week, he trained some 15 models needing to “sleekify,” as he called it, to squeeze into sample sizes. (Most common problem: the hips.)

Oh, hell.  Here we go.

Mr. Olajide, 49, a highly ranked middleweight boxer until an injury left him legally blind in the right eye and ended his career, has been attracting the fashion crowd since his days teaching at Equinox and Chelsea Piers in the 1990s. 

Equinox?  That explains a lot.

Eventually, the 6-foot, 165-pound Mr. Olajide ended up training the supermodels Iman and Linda Evangelista.

Wait... "6-foot, 165-pound"?  Seriously?

What about the clients?

Mr. Olajide acknowledged that the weight can come back on quickly once the workout (and preshow diets) stop. 

“Like boxers, they have a performance weight and an everyday weight,” he said of models. With each season, it can get harder to snap back to sample size. “It becomes: Will they allow themselves mentally to go to that level of discomfort? How hungry are they?” 

Good question.  Just how hungry are they?

The British model Nyasha Matonhodze, 18, started working out at Mr. Olajide’s gym at her agency’s recommendation. “As models, we know that we have to be, some would say, ridiculously thin,” she said. “It’s not exactly a woman’s shape, but it is high fashion.” 

So, they realize they're so skinny that they no longer have "a woman's shape", but they keep doing it anyway.  Does this sound remotely healthy to anyone?  And why are women using women who no longer look like women to sell women's clothes to women?

Exercises that trim mere mortals can be career-maiming for catwalkers. Push-ups are out — developing the chest is bad news

God forbid a woman be strong enough to lift herself off the floor!

— as are squats and lunges, which make the derrière too round to fit into the clothes. (Lingerie models are allowed lunges because they are allowed curves, he said.)

Right; because a flat butt and a rectangular figure are ideal for a woman.

Ab exercises also are rationed. “When they really burn the fat you’ll see a six-pack, which is not usually the goal,” Mr. Olajide said. “You want flat, but if you’re too cut, defined and hard, that can be counterproductive. We want long, willowy, wispy, flowing.”

In other words, weak.

Caitlin Holleran, 16, who in October wore a fitted floor-length chiffon dress on the Yves Saint Laurent runway in Paris, had to shrink her hips back down by two inches this season to match the measurement (34 inches) listed on her modeling card. Among other things, the type of power vinyasa yoga she’d been doing was building too much muscle, she said, adding bulk. 

Are you freaking kidding me?  36-inch hips are too big?  Yoga "was building too much muscle" and "adding bulk"?  And this girl is only 16!

Contrast that with the following irreverently, hilariously titled article.

Women’s Only: “OMG You Have an Amazing Ass”

I recently had a 15-year-old girl come to me for personal training to get her back in

shape before cheerleading started up again in the fall. Having done cheerleading and knowing just how many issues teenage girls can have with their bodies, weight and over-exercising, I’ll admit I was a little worried about what I might be dealing with. 

That girl, however, completely blew me away before our first session was even over. Right off the bat she came across happy, confident and comfortable in her body, and it was clear as soon as I’d put her through some basic exercises that she was pretty capable. In the middle of the session, while I was showing her some technique for her pushups, she just looked at me and said: 

"OMG you have an amazing ass — you look so strong!"

What?  A girl doing push-ups?  Oh, the horror!

This definitely made me laugh, but the message/mentality behind what she said made my entire weekend. For those of you who don’t know me, yes I do have a big butt, and while my legs are by no means huge by CrossFit standards, they’re definitely not small either.

If Yoga builds too much muscle and adds bulk, then "manly" movements, such as push-ups, rope climbs and squats, will obviously turn a girl into the she-hulk - right?

Uh... no, actually.  Not really.  Back to the story. 

For me it took finding CrossFit to finally let go of the “Skinny is Sexy” mentality, and I’m glad that I did; but I’m even more glad that a young girl who has never done CrossFit (or even heard of it) already considers strength way more important and attractive than being a size zero.

Awesome!

I went through high school convinced I needed to be skinny, and it wasn’t until my 20s — when I was introduced to CrossFit and weightlifting — that I realized the fact that my natural body type will always be strong (not petite) and began to accept that. Suddenly I was in a world where where the focus was NOT on
“burning calories,”
“losing weight,” or
“being a size zero.”
Instead I discovered that
performance trumped appearance;training was something you did to get stronger/faster/better; and
you ate to fuel your body 

Doesn't training "to get stronger/faster/better" and eating "to fuel your body" sound healthier than a woman starving herself until she - by her own admission - no longer resembles a woman?

Here's the question I really need to ask all you ladies out there, though, because I can't answer it myself.  Why do women insist on torturing themselves like this?  I don't mean the models.  They've clearly made a cost/benefit analysis.  They believe the money, fame and adulation they (will potentially) receive are worth the sacrifices they make.

Julie Foucher demonstrates the overhead squat.

What I mean is; why do ordinary women insist on torturing themselves by giving the fashion industry the financial incentive to use women who've starved themselves into no longer looking like women to sell them clothes?  Why do ordinary women want to look like them?  As the NYT article makes clear, not even the models themselves can look that way for long.

And don't even try to blame it on us men, ladies!  Heterosexual men do not dominate the fashion
industry.  Women and homosexual men dominate the industry.

Face it, ladies, you are doing this to yourselves - and each other. 

My question is; why?  What's the point?  What do you get out of it - other than eating disorders, a perpetual sense of failure and abject misery?

I don't get it ladies.  I just don't.  Maybe one of you can enlighten me.