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The beauty of slimness
In a Facebook group, I recently posted a picture of a ballerina. A member of the group immediately protested that the model is too thin, possibly anorexic. This is not the first time I received such comments. There is a kind of anti-thin sentiment in our culture. The concern here is that some young women may starve themselves to meet certain impractical standards of beauty. Here, we see two issues being confused: (1) There is a question of whether slimness is more physically attractive. (2) There is a question of whether it is advisable to go for extreme dieting in order to meet certain perceived standard of beauty. Clearly, they are two separate issues. The situation is no different from blaming a difficult college-entrance exam because many students deprive themselves of sleep and jeopardize their own health preparing for it. The implicit assumption here is that the young person cannot judge for herself what is the proper and sensible thing to do.
It is important not to succumb to political correctness when it comes to beauty and physical attractiveness. If we do that, there cannot be any objective study or scientific research — for it becomes socially unacceptable to draw certain conclusions despite what the facts say. We will then let politics dominate or dictate science!
Is slimness healthy? A few years ago, I visited my hometown in Hong Kong, after an absence of over 10…
