Reply to Am I the only one who thinks Kate Middleton is anorexic?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Oh Lord, we've had this discussion already.

No, she is not anorexic. Anorexia is a rare and life-threatening mental illness. Not every thin person is anorexic.

Europeans are generally much thinner than Americans (not exactly hard!).

Some people find it hard to gain weight at certain points in their life - my mother is like this, and she eats quite normally.

She is probably very conscious of her image and has the means to perfect it - which again, in Europe, is a perfectly good one. 
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[b][b]Anorexia is not rare.[/b][/b][/quote]

"An estimated 0.5 to 3.7 percent of women suffer from anorexia nervosa in their lifetime." From the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.
Please don't lump people who casually worry about their weight and diet, with people who have a true disease - it muddies the water for everyone and doesn't help patients.
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Consider this:  69% of american women are overweight.
Even though anorexia CAN take place in someone who is overweight, it tends to happen with thinner people.  So let's just take women who are normal weight, not even really skinny.  3.7% of the general population means that fully 10% of the normal weight women you see are struggling with anorexia.  There's a good chance that it's going to be represented in the very skinny/underweight.
[b]So when you see a woman who is extremely, extremely skinny, [/b]it's not at all unlikely that she is struggling with anorexia.
I have struggled with it myself, and it's a bitch to overcome.
And yes, in my opinion- I think Kate could very well have it.[/quote]

I understand your point, but disagree with the bolded. It's only Americans who will see her as "extremely, extremely thin". As a French woman, all I see is a slim young woman, like the many who walk to their jobs in the morning on Parisian streets in their high heels. You think she's abnormally thin because the majority of Americans are overweight, so obviously your visual standard for the average human shape has shifted toward the pudgy, since it's all we see here! Which, BTW, is the most insidious danger of this obesity crisis: the fact that Americans grow up without strong visual references to normal healthy bodies.

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So how do you explain the growing rate of obesity in France, especially amongst children?[/quote]

That question does not pertain to the discussion, but I'll answer it. Obesity is on the rise everywhere in Europe and Asia, now people are finally habituating to fast foods that were not culturally relevant before and finding it cheaper to feed their kids junk food than healthy veggies and fruits. It's somewhat concerning and there are fledgling public health campaigns to stem the tide. The reason this question is only tangentially related to the discussion is that the numbers do not even come close the American numbers for overweight and obese people! The adult population is much thinner than the one in the US, [b]therefore visually there are still standards children can look up to[/b]. Which means we have some time to act, thankfully.

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You don't think being thin is highly valued in America? Very curious as to where you live in the States.[/quote]

Me too.  And if it's a place where women are not routinely body shamed for not being thin enough, I would love to move there.  Cause I certainly haven't seen it. [/quote]

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