Body Image

I've been recently thinking about body image and where our desire to look a certain way comes from. It seems that most women aspire to be ultra thin and most men aspire, these days, to be the same - incredibly thin. There has been a trend for men to wear really skinny ladies-style jeans.

Thinking about this has led me to the following conclusions:

Magazines are encouraging this behaviour by publishing pictures of models who are already thin and then the magazines are 'photoshopping' the pictures.
Evidence:

and again..

Is this the same woman?
I conducted a straw-poll at work of the men I know - out of 16 blokes asked, 13 said they preferred a woman to have a shape as opposed to the angular bony offerings that the fashion houses seem to be pushing on us.

Both of the examples I posted here, if they were real, have got body shapes that pre-pubescent boys would be ashamed of. It makes you wonder exactly what 'floats the boats' of these men(?) who design clothes. It is as if they prefer young boys to women.

 Seriously - Who alive could fit into jeans like this?

And finally - Men are not immune too from this -

Even I as a rank amateur can photoshop better than this - And here, ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure; we have the 'Origami man' (Above)