Sorry, sickly models: Normal-sized women are much more attractive

By David McElroy · January 18, 2012

About eight or nine years ago, I dated a woman for a few months who was a model. As you might expect, she was beautiful. She had a lovely face and a perfectly proportioned and perfectly sized body. The odd part? This physically perfect woman was a “plus-size model.”

Since I don’t pay attention to fashion or to modeling, I hadn’t consciously realized until then just how insane the world of modeling had become. I didn’t realize just how hideous most models are. And I didn’t realize just how warped most women’s images of their own bodies have become.

I’m thinking about this today because of publicity from a story in Plus Model magazine about the difference in size between mainstream models and plus-size models. The magazine argues that models small enough to work in mainstream modeling meet the definition of anorexic. I don’t know about that, but I do know that I almost never find those waifs attractive.

What I’ve become sure of is that women have very distorted images of their body size today. Is it from the anorexic girls they see presented to them as the examples of what women should look like? I have no idea. I’m just sure that the truth has become distorted beyond hope in many of them. I’m going to mention three examples of women I’ve known.

When I was a senior in high school, a very attractive girl in my graduating class suddenly started losing weight. She wasn’t eating anything and she seemed to become obsessed with her size. She had been a perfectly normal-sized girl — not the slightest bit overweight — but she was suddenly afraid that if she ate anything, she would become a cow. She started falling asleep in class and this previously attractive girl started taking on a “death camp survivor” look. In college, I got to know her well and understood the emotional causes of the problem. She got over the issue and returned to normal size, but she retained psychological and physical scars of the ordeal.

About 10 years ago, I dated a woman who was 5-9 and 128 pounds. To normal people, that sounds skinny, but she thought she was far too big, because she had been only 112 pounds in high school. She had “ballooned” to 128 by the time she was 28 years old. She was still too skinny, but she was convinced she was too big.

Last, the most attractive woman I know isn’t anorexic and never has been, but because she does have a normal-sized body, she’s convinced that she’s unattractive. She thinks she’s huge and doesn’t feel good about herself. If you met her, you’d never know it, because she doesn’t talk about it. But it messes with her head and distorts her sense of self. A woman who should realize that she’s strikingly beautiful and perfect-sized is paranoid about her body instead. Why? Is it the distorted message she gets from the media? Is it from comparing herself to overly skinny girls and assuming she’s supposed to be like them? I don’t know.

If you happen to be a naturally skinny woman — and I know that a few skinny women are very beautiful — I don’t mean this as a criticism of you. If it happens to work for you because of your genetics, that’s fine. But, honestly, I’m not going to find you as attractive as the fuller-figured women. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

If you’re a man, I’m curious what you really think. Take a look at the photos in the Plus Model magazine spread and tell me whether the waif or the bigger woman is more attractive to you. The waif is a size 0. The bigger woman is a size 12-14, according to her bio. (Before you head over there, let me warn you that the women are naked, with certain parts simply strategically covered. If you’d rather avoid the pictures, the woman here in the black dress is the plus-size model, Katya Zharkova.) I find the bigger woman far, far more attractive. If you agree with me, I hope you’ll take the time to let the normal-sized women in your life know that you appreciate them not being anorexic and not trying to be something they’re not.

If you’re a woman, I’d like you to look at the pictures and ask yourself which you’d be happier being. I’ll bet most women would instinctively prefer to be the size 0, if they’re honest. I hope not, but I suspect it’s true. For what it’s worth, I have to tell you that if that is what you would like for yourself, you’re seeking to be something that most guys in real life don’t want.

And if you happen to be that attractive woman I spoke of in the third example above, I hope you’ll realize that you’re perfect the way you are — at just the size you are. Of course, there’s more to being attractive than being the right size. Everyone already knows that I give lots and lots of extra bonus points to women who are smart, funny and like to read. Who could ask for more than that?

Real women — with curvy bodies and well-developed minds and beautiful hearts and nuanced values — are the interesting ones. Not the women who appear to have just been released from concentration camps.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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