A few Sundays back, I wrote about the stir created after Glamour magazine featured a picture of a model who was a few pounds heavier than the ones most of us are accustomed to seeing. Glamour’s readers were thrilled by the picture, and the magazine was soon inundated with letters and emails from delighted readers.

And for the most part, the feedback I received about the column was equally enthusiastic.  All but one.

“I can tell you that personally, the last thing I want to see when I open a fashion magazine is ‘reality,’” wrote Liza in a comment on my Gazz blog. “If I want to see overweight, common, unfashionable women, I need look no further than any street at any time of day, anywhere in this state.” 

Liza wrote that she reads magazines like Vogue, Harpers, and Glamour because she loves style and beauty, as well as the mystique and art of fashion and fashion models. “When it comes to selling magazines, it’s the 5′10″ 110 lb. model that sells them,” says Liza.

The fashion industry has been pushing their skeletal=beauty equation ever since Twiggy in the 60s, and since then, young women have been starving (and up-chucking) themselves to death in the pursuit of meeting those unhealthy standards.

From a financial perspective, I don’t understand the thinking of those in the fashion industry. To me, the reason for using models that are shaped more like average women seems obvious: Women know that what looks good on a pencil isn’t likely to look as good on a highlighter. But if an outfit works on a model who is shaped more like the average woman, then the average woman is more likely to want to purchase that outfit.

But Liza disagreed with that, too. “Designers don’t want heavy women wearing their fashions. That’s why you can’t get Prada in an 18. It’s just the reality of high fashion–the greatest creation in the world is lost on a wide backside, and that’s just a sad fact of life. Besides, designers are all about exclusivity, and given that most American women are overweight, ultra thin is exclusive. Sad reality.”

It hasn’t always been that way, though. In paintings from the 19th century and earlier, beautiful women were full-figured, Rubenesque. Even into the 1950s, celebrities were curvaceous.

To be skinny was seen as unhealthy and therefore dangerous, and to such a degree that thinness was shocking. Since shocking meant getting noticed, advertising gurus took note and made use of it, as did fashion designers. In the mid-1990s, when skinny alone was no longer enough to draw attention, it was taken to the next level with heroin chic–even more severely jutting bones, pale skin, and dark circles under the eyes. A look reflective of drug addiction.

If advertisers and designers are paying attention, perhaps some will be savvy enough to realize that featuring an average-sized woman in ads has become every bit as shocking and attention-getting as Twiggy and those heroin chic chicks once were.

It’s interesting to consider how much of what we like or believe to be attractive and important is shaped by television, movies, and magazines. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe-a size 14-was the epitome of sexy. Then along came Twiggy. 

In the 1950s, men were predominantly clean-shaven. Mustaches and beards were viewed as an indicator of shiftiness or danger (think of the criminal landlord twirling his handlebar mustache). Then along came Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck with their manly mustaches, and the public’s perception toward facial hair changed. 

Used to be that men who were losing their hair resorted to toupees, comb-overs, or hats, until Yul Brynner and Telly Sevalas came along and demonstrated how good hairless could look.

I can’t help but hope that the days of uber-thin models are nearing an end, that a healthier trend will begin. I doubt Liza would agree.

Though she did have a point.

“There’s a happy medium somewhere between toothpick models and the overweight of this country,” wrote Liza. “But if you need fashion magazines to validate yourself, then you have bigger problems than body image issues. If you accept yourself for what you are, then you shouldn’t care what the magazines say.” 

From an article in BUST magazine… 

STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Three models spurred controversy when they brought some realism to the runway. These “curvy” (aka normal) women appeared alongside stick-figure thin models in Mark Fast’s London Fashion Week show last Saturday. The biggest shocker is that their inclusion prompted Fast’s stylist and creative designer to walk out over ‘’creative differences.’’ The reasoning behind Fast’s casting was that he “wanted women to know they didn’t have to be a size zero to wear a Mark Fast dress.” (Image from The Daily News)

It had happened to me before, but I’m a slow study, so I fell victim again. 

“Hey there!” the friendly woman said as we crossed paths in the restroom, with her taking the stall I’d just left. 

“Hi,” I said, turning to see if she was someone I knew, but the door was already closed. 

“So how ya’ doing?” she asked while I was washing my hands. “Been into anything interesting lately?”

“Not especially,” I said. “How about you?”

When she didn’t answer for a while, yet was not exactly silent, I said, “Wow. Sounds like you had a lot of coffee this morning.”

“Just a second, Stacy,” said the voice. “Hey-sorry. I wasn’t talking to you. I’m on a call with someone.”

“Sorry,” I said quickly, then hurried out. 

I miss the good old days when it was easy to tell the difference between crazies who were walking around talking to themselves and the people wearing Bluetooth headsets and talking to an actual person.

And I especially miss the good old days when a business call didn’t necessarily mean the person calling was doing their business.

I’m as guilty of extreme multitasking as the next overtaxed person, so I can certainly understand the desire to make use of what was previously just plain down time. But making phone calls from the restroom while seated in that way is one line I won’t cross.

I heard a story on All Things Considered last year about a man who accidentally dropped his Blackberry in airplane toilet. He quickly reached in and retrieved his phone from the swirling pool of dark blue liquid, then cleaned it up as good as he could. The phone still worked well enough that he was able to call his wife as he exited the plane. 

It wasn’t until after he’d shaken hands with his client that he learned the blue dye from the phone’s short time in the bowl had been transferred to his face.

I’m not a big fan of cell phones. I understand the convenience, the safety factor, and all the other selling points, but there’s something about being unreachable that appeals to both me and my husband.

It wasn’t until recently that he and I got a cell phone to share. That was four months ago. We haven’t been able to find it for three. I’m not sure either of us has really bothered to look, probably because we feel like hypocrites for owning one consider all the complaining we do about them.

I get annoyed every time I’m behind one of those distracted drivers with a head tilted at that telling angle most use when on a call. Most of them don’t even know they’re weaving outside of their lane. I get especially aggravated when those drivers have a kid or two in the car. Aside from the safety issues, there are few places better for talking with children then when you have them held captive that way.

And while most cell users seem to have grown accustomed to turning off their ringers during movies and live performances, they seem oblivious to how distracting their constant texting can be. That rapid two-handing clicking and brightly lit screen are hard to ignore.

One of my biggest cell peeves is those who take calls and conduct long conversations while out with another person.

While eating dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant recently, one of the two women seated directly across from us received a call. Like us, they had just placed their order, and we watched as the one woman’s phone conversation continued until the food arrived, as the food was eaten, and even after the bill was brought and left on the table. It was only when her dinner companion stood up to pay that she got off the phone.

Still, all the recent technological advances with cell phones are impressive. There’s so much they can do.

It’s just a shame that where manners are concerned, there’s not an app for that, too.

“We got one of those midnight phone calls last night,” my friend said. “It was our neighbor. They had a squirrel in their house.”

Turns out my friend’s husband has a reputation for being the go-to guy for random critter removal.

“Did he get it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “He just walked over and grabbed it by the tail. It bit him three times.”

If someone grabbed my tail, they’d get the same. 

Had I known of his gift for vermin removal, I could’ve called him several years back when we had a squirrel in our attic. 

The industrious squirrel had taken advantage of a missing slat in a vent to gain access to our attic. Judging by the size of the nest she built between rafters, it was clear she was expecting a good number of guests (either that or she’d heard about the “nut” who lived at our house and was contemplating taking a human hostage to feast on over the winter).

Regardless of her motives, the squirrel had to go, but as animal lovers, we wanted a gentle removal. Fixing the vent resulted in soon having to plug her chewed holes. She wasn’t going to go easily. 

I tried to coerce (force might be a more accurate word) one of our cats into the attic, thinking fresh cat scent might frighten the squirrel, but it would’ve been easier to thread a needle with a pair of greased anacondas.

Convinced the idea was a sound one, however, I went outside and nabbed a somewhat feral neighborhood cat, gave him a few bites of ham, then put him (and more ham) in the attic.

It worked. In a way.

The squirrel left. The cat stayed.

A few years back, one of my coworkers told how she and her children arrived home and found their house had been ransacked. Belongings were knocked off the shelves, curtains and pictures hung askew. Broken glass and the contents of spilled containers littered the floor.

Yet the doors were all locked, the windows all closed. The house was totally silent.

Afraid the family’s pet cat had been harmed by the intruder, they did a quick search of the house, and found the cat collapsed against the bathroom wall, panting hard and looking exhausted.

Breathing equally hard against the other wall was the intruder.

A squirrel.

It had apparently squeezed into the house through a small hole in the roof, then had been unable to get back to that hole after the lifelong indoor cat thought its fresh-meat-delivery prayers had been answered.

Based on the extent of the destruction, it appeared squirrel and cat had spent the entire day in a life-and-lunch struggle before such a thorough exhaustion overtook them that all each could manage was to glare at the other.

They grabbed the squirrel by its tail. It dangled limply, too tired to even attempt a bite (or three). They set it free in their yard.

And their cat, watching the-one-that-got-away get away, couldn’t even muster the energy to look annoyed.

For those who know cats, that means “nearly dead.”

It was just a 3″ by 3″ picture in a magazine, but it caught and held my attention in such a way that I decided to visit the magazine’s website to leave a comment about it. A quick note of thanks.

Turns out I was hardly alone.

The Glamour magazine article was about liking yourself as you are, and the photo they chose to illustrate the story was of a model who was laughing while posing in her underwear.

And the model had a stomach that was (gasp!) normal.

I don’t mean normal by model standards. I mean normal as in my-diet-doesn’t-mimic-a-rabbit normal.

Delighted readers began inundating Glamour with notes thanking them for showing a woman’s body “with all the curves and quirks and rolls found in nature,” wrote one.

“It was great to see a healthy woman without her flaws airbrushed out,” wrote another. “It was a bit shocking to see a model with a real-life tummy, which just goes to show how conditioned I am to seeing ‘perfect’ people in magazines. But I loved it! Women are made in so many ways, not in a cookie-cutter format.”

Early this year, dozens of magazines featured Jessica Simpson’s shocking weight gain on their covers. It seems she’d become an atrocity. A monstrosity.  

A size 8.

The thing is–the average U.S. woman is a size 14. Granted, we’re an overweight nation, but even so, I can’t comprehend this bizarre chasm that exists between the real world and the one where fashion designers and casting agents and those types reside.

And I didn’t realize how hungry for validation those in the real world were until I read some of the remarks about the page 194 woman.

“I love how happy she seems, especially given all the negative messages from the fashion industry telling her she is fat and therefore unattractive.”

“This beautiful woman has a real stomach–and did I even see a few stretch marks? This is how my belly looks after giving birth to my two amazing kids! This photo made me want to shout from the rooftops.”

A few years back, Dove started an ad campaign featuring women of many sizes and ages, with the gist of the ads being that the women liked themselves as they were, that they were comfortable in their own skin. It was considered a brave move for Dove, especially since the dirty little secret in the beauty business is that you can’t sell your product if women actually like how they look.

The industry uses ultra-gorgeous, super-skinny models because they think women are vacant enough to believe, “I want to look like her, and if I buy this, I will.”

As our nation has grown larger, models have become smaller, with the average model now weighing 23 percent less than the average woman. Twenty years ago, the average model weighed an average of 8 percent less. Plus, the models in print ads are often Photoshopped to perfection, helping to create a culture of women who are conditioned to see that as the norm. One to which few can measure up.

It’s no wonder eating disorders are rampant. 

Women are clearly hungry for reality, but are being fed a narrow-minded idea of beauty.          

“This one’s a definite for my Monday File,” I said to my husband as he took my place at the computer.

“Is that what you’re calling it now?” asked Geoff. “What happened to-what was it?-your visual antidepressants?”

“Eye Prozac,” I said. “I dunno. Monday File seems to fit better. I need them more at the start of a week.”

I stood behind him as he watched the latest of my growing collection of short YouTube videos that have become my virtual security blanket-what I turn to for comfort when I’m feeling low.

Many of the videos I’m holding on to are ones that have gone viral, the term for content that spreads from one person’s computer to the next faster than swine flu symptoms through a hypochondriac convention. It’s the kind of phenomena that turned Susan Boyle of Britain’s Got Talent into an overnight celebrity and inspired a generation of brides to start choosing their attendants based on how good they can dance.

Right now, my favorite is a video filmed in a train station in Antwerp, Belgium, in March 2009. I’ll briefly describe it.

It’s 8 in the morning and the station is crowded. There’s the usual din of train station noises when all of a sudden, a recording of Julie Andrews singing ‘Do, Re, Mi’ begins playing over the speaker system. A man, dressed like an ordinary traveler, goes to the center of the courtyard and starts dancing. A young girl with a backpack joins him, and then a handful of others, dressed in everyday garb, join in for a wonderfully choreographed, yet totally spontaneous-looking dance.

A swarm of school-aged children starts dancing their way down a wide staircase while other dancers spill in from here and there to join the main group, which has now grown to about 200 participants.

When the song ends, the crowd of dancers disburses so quickly and smoothly that you’d never know the dance had just happened. The spectators are left looking amusingly stunned.

It’s easy to understand why the video went viral, with well over one million views. It was one of those things that, if you allow it, can make you feel good for hours. 

Over the next few days, I noticed I was feeling compelled to watch it again and again, and it wasn’t until I made note of the circumstances surrounding those compulsions that I realized what it was that was drawing me there.

Each time I heard or read something that struck me as particularly barbaric, or news of a child or animals being hurt or mistreated, it was like my mind needed to balance the bad with some good.

That all those people were willing to take the time to learn that dance in order to provide a quick thrill for a bunch of total strangers who didn’t have a clue what was happening-I find that enchanting. Powerful.

Inspiring.

When I allow myself to pay too much attention to the news or our finances or the amount of work needing done, it’s hard not to get down. I need to expand my collection of videos into something that doesn’t require a computer to see. I need a list to remind myself about all the people who mow lawns for elderly neighbors or fix meals for exhausted new parents or tend the graves of total strangers just because someone should. 

People who catch and fix feral cats, who decorate random statues and trees with knitted scarves, who make a point of dropping change in places for children to find. 

Who make things better for others they don’t even know.

They give us a reason to want to join in the dance.