The Hulk and Skeletor

I just watched "Super Slim Me", a BBC3 documentary where Dawn Porter attempts to drop 4 dress sizes to become a hollywood size 0 by consuming 500 calories a day. It's an interesting little documentary, which annoyingly on youtube was squashed to what looked like the 4:3 aspect ratio (the square screen shape you used to get on old Televisions before wide screen) which ironically made everything look skinnier than it was. The documentary is a little old but it's worth seeing.

There's not a whole lot of new ground being broken here but it's compelling viewing all the same seeing the drastic change she goes through with changes in mood, health problems and decreased enjoyment of life. There's a few silly parts thrown in, ever the shit stirrer, dawn tries to deliver a piece of cake to Victoria Beckham's house in Spain and tries to get quotes from Rachel Zoe.

Probably the most unsettling part of the program was an experiment at a fashion exhibition where young girls are often recruited as models. Before being told they are part of the experiment Dawn asks the girls how much weight they would be willing to lose to become a model, the amount and willingness is a little unsettling.

Anyway having watched this program I felt that the body image that many women are trying to attain is quite ridiculous, but equally ridiculous is the dangerous path women are willing to go in order to achieve it. That led me to realise that even men now aren't immune to falling victim to body image problems. There seems to be an alarming trend (at least in Australia) of young guys doing steroids to achieve the body beautiful. This is something that is only starting to be addressed now, there is an excellent story on background briefing about the growing steroid culture in Australia .

So in closing there's really something deeply wrong with society when men are aspiring to be the Hulk and women are aspiring to be Skeletor. When I was a teenager I wanted to be Batman.