Back in late November, ballet critic Alastair Maccaulay was reviewing a performance of the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker Suite. Jenifer Ringer, a featured ballerina in the Ballet, was cast as the Sugar plum Fairy.
McCauley said in his review, "She looks like she's eaten one sugar plum too many." (Translation? She's overweight. She's fat.)
However, in the same review and in the same paragraph, Macauley also gave his opinion that one of the male ballet danceers also looked like he'd spent to long at the sweet trolley. Translation, he also was fat.
But all the brouhaha since then has been about the fact that he called a ballerina - someone with probably no fat on her bones, fat.
So of course there's a double standard, but that's because guys don't mind being fat. (Well, most guys, there are always exceptions to the rule.) But most guys can have a gut out to here, and they still think that they are irresistable to the ladies.
Women, on the other hand, don't have that luxury. Jenifer Ringer, indeed, is a recovered anorexic, which made Macaulay's comment not only all the more hurtful, but dangeorus. God forbid this perfectly fit and healthy-weight woman should think to herself, "Oh, god, I weigh a pound too much, I've got to stop eating right now."
The reason I bring this up is that it just goes to show that women just can't win. There's always going to be someone in a position of "power" - a critic, a boss, a boyfriend - who, no matter what they weight, is going to say, "Hey, you should lose a few pounds." And more often than not the woman is, unfortunately, going to take this to heart and start starving herself.
In any event, the point of this rant is simple. Do not stress out about your weight. Your goal is to become physically fit and have weight in proportion to your height. You can't please all of the peole all of the time, so go with what's healthy.
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