There was a truly WTF? item in the morning newspaper today. Here's an excerpt from AM New York:

Subway Late? Blame the Lady Wearing a Size 0
These women--many fainting during the morning rush hour due to crash diets--have been a leading cause of subway delays in the past year, according to MTA personnel."Sick customer," MTA-speak for a subway delay caused by an ill passenger, was the No. 3 cause of disruptions between October 2005 and October 2006, an analysis of agency statistics shows. "You have women trying to get their bodies tight for the summer and they won¹t eat," said Asim Nelson, a Transit emergency medical technician based in Grand Central Station. "Not eating for three or four days, you are going to go down. If you don't eat for 12 hours you are going to get weak."Talisa McGraw, 17, sheepishly admitted to skipping breakfast and dinner the night before she fainted on a downtown No. 4 train on her way to Manhattan Village Academy at about 8 a.m. last month."I felt dizzy and light and dropped down. Luckily someone got me a seat and called the conductor," she said. At Grand Central, Nelson brought her to his small office, monitored her vital signs and waited for an ambulance to take her to a hospital for a check-up . In all, Nelson treated five women that same morning, all of who fainted or reported feeling weak. An average of 395 delays per month are caused by sick customers. Only track work and signal troubles triggered more delays.

You mean I'm getting to work late because someone wants to be a size 0? Every time I've heard the conductor announce that trains are delayed due to a medical emergency, horrific images of a man in the throes of a heart attack materialize. I certainly never imagined it was because a skinny woman needed a granola bar.

This sort of pisses me off.

What a silly world we live in where anorexia is rewarded and what's more, encouraged. The cult of celebrity worship, now at a particularly distasteful level, only feeds this attitude and helps we mere mortals feel even more inadequate in our feminine skins. While critical of celebrities who have starved themselves to the point of death, the tabloids then marvel that this skelator trend has spawned a new dress size: sub zero. If we saw a picture of Kate Bosworth in Ethiopia, we'd be moved to send a check to UNICEF. Instead, this glamorization of these role models only reinforces the cult that stick thin = ideal. I mean, if Mary Kate and Nicole can survive on lattes and cigarettes and air, well then, so should we all.

I won't go on a skinny woman attack here because it's a tedious old argument. One of the reason I like "Glamour" magazine is that it does a positive job in reinforcing women's body image and sense of self. OK, it also has a lot of frivolous articles about orgasms and bad clothing choices, but it makes a definite statement about self acceptance and the appreciation of the diversity of women of all shapes, sizes, colors and the whole kumbaya. However, for all the positive messaging the publication espouses, it simply can't counteract the larger opinion of society.

Now, I doubt you'll believe me, a woman who freely rhapsodizes about the virtue of fried food and grits. But I do believe we need to be healthy and it's up to us to make an effort to be fit. It's OK to accept the fact that you may never be a size 0. It's never OK to starve yourself. I know the Duchess of Windsor once famously quipped, "You can never be too rich or too thin." I will never be either and well, I don't regret it. I still look pretty good in (and out of) my clothes.

Over lunch today [oh, yes, I ate lunch], I read this article to Jewels and Mamela. When I mentioned the part about sub-zero, Jewels said, "Isn't that a refrigerator?"

Why yes, it really should be.