i thought it was just fine!

Yeah, it's not hostile or mean at all - sorry if anything other people said made you think otherwise.

The ability to be able to feel confident and healthy in your own skin at a middling weight is something I think most people wish they could achieve - elsewise we wouldn't be posting on 3FC ;)

I think your post was fine too, I understood what you were saying. :)

We sometimes get in our head a number that we'd like to be and don't notice how we may look when we get there. Sunken cheeks doesn't sound like a healthy look to me.

We battle our vision of ourself whether we are large or small, our brains can trick us.

I thought your post sounded fine too. I know that when I was 15 lbs heavier everyone kept telling me to stop losing. Admittedly, my face was gaunt at that time, but I continued to slowly lose to this point--about 6 months. Over that time my face filled out again and the comments stopped too. I don't think my experience is unusual at all. We are all different. My mom still thinks I'm too thin and was surprised when I told her what I weigh. She felt that I probably weighed 15 lbs less than I do (probably the weight training).

I also thought your post was fine :) It's no secret that most of us our ladies with weight issues...insecurities about body image and the ideal weight thing are definitely "hot topics." I absolutely understood what you meant. I don't think any of us can deny that it's possible to lose weight past the point of being healthy, and that is not attractive. I know where I personally get frustrated when thinking about this topic is the statement of "real women have curves" or the blanket statement that "men prefer women with some meat." That's as damaging as saying things like "only skinny women are beautiful" and "men prefer skinny chicks." Because as it has been said over and over, real women AND beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, and the men of the world have vastly wide preferences in female body types.

Aaaanyways. Losermom, your anecdote of your mother reminded me of a situation I have with my fiance's aunt. She's this tiny 4'10 Japanese lady (his uncle was a soldier and met/married her in Japan) who never fails to speak her mind. Before I lost weight, she once asked if my entire family was obese like me...in front of everyone. And she'd always poke my chub and call me "too soft." She honestly didn't mean it as an insult, just observations. Well now that I'm thin, it's just the opposite. She's always ranting and ragging on me for looking like I'm starved. She asked how much I weighed, and I told her 125lbs. She said "that's too fat!!!" She didn't make the connection that 125lbs looks a lot different on somebody who is 5'7 than it would on her itty bitty self. If I weighed 90lbs like her, you wouldn't be able to see me from the side, lol, I'd disappear.

I wish I could go back in time and give my tweenish self a hug and show her some pictures of Katy Perry. I'm in my forties, so the ideal body shape of my formative years was a fair bit more restrictive than it is today. Now we see women with a lot of different body types showcased as beautiful, but there was a lot more uniformity then. If your cheekbones weren't visible, you just weren't trying hard enough.

Thin was in--and that meant everything else was out. Madonna was actually a shock to me in the early '80s because she looked...well, she looked pudgy compared to the Farrah Fawcett/Cheryl Tiegs body types that were everywhere just a few years earlier. (She wasn't pudgy, of course; she just had a compact, athletic body instead of the thin, willowy type of the late '70s.)

The single best thing anyone can do for herself (or himself, for that matter) to improve body image is taking an art appreciation class. The apple-breasted, wide-hipped medieval nudes had convex bellies and hairlines plucked back to their ears. Titian's and Rubens' women had legs like tree-trunks and back fat. Henry VIII was proud of his massive calves and made sure they were featured prominently in his portraiture. Degas' dancers were taut, elegant, and athletic. Modigliani's women were as slender as knives and Egon Schiele's were downright bony. And all of them are art.

No matter what you look like, someone somewhere from some time considered your body type the hottest shape on the planet. We're actually pretty lucky that right now, there are a lot of "in" looks to emulate; there is no one ideal right now.

Nola, I can't even imagine the issues I'd have if I grew up during the underw-eighties (HAR HAR, wow that was possibly the least funny pun I've ever made, apologies). I love love love that now it's possible for many body types to be viewed as beautiful.

I will say overall probably almost 75% of American women idealize the approx. size 4 "slim but toned" shape we are taught via mass media is healthy and good looking. If you read lists of female celebrity measurements they're almost all within a couple inches of each other. Just like how in Asia every single female celebrity's weight is listed as between 88 and 105 lbs. *eye roll*

well i guess i'm unusual lol. i idolize my former self! ha! well in my dream thats with an athletic 150 ish bod. (my freshman hs wt) but i'm already there as in where i used to be. i'm practically at my highschool weight now lol! well..maybe 10-15 to go. oh well. my first thought when i read that post, i'm it now! as much as i complain, its so much better to be at this size than going up, with more muscle this time ;D

Krampus, I love nothing more than a good ****ty pun, so I am totally delighted with underw-eighties. :D

It's fantastic that there's so much more latitude now, that people don't automatically look at a rounder body and say "ew, fat!" or at a narrower body and say "ew, skinny!" There are a lot more kinds of pretty in the world today, which is awesome.

I wish people could...I don't know, switch places with each other or magically shape-change or something. It'd be fascinating to know what it felt like to be 88 pounds or to be 6'4" and 300 pounds of muscle holding down the offensive line or to be an Olympic swimmer.

Guess I'll have to settle for subtler transformations in the real world. :)

I'm one who has never found thighs touching to be especially attractive. When mine stopped touching I was elated. I'd still choose not to have my thighs touch even if my BF, whom I adore, preferred that they did. But, that said, it can be taken too far. There's a middle ground for me.

That's what I like. And that's really all that matters to me.

As far as curves go, I appreciate many different body types, and I find that thin women and fuller women both can have great curves. I've also seen tall, thin women with a minimum of curve that looked regal. They rocked their body type. Me, I'm into muscle, but I can still appreciate certain willowy women, tall or short. I think Asians are lovely, for example.

As for ideals changing, I'm 37 and have always liked the same kinds of body types.

I don't think there is more latitude now. I think that THIS is what changes as we age--we become more accepting of a wider range of beauty. I teach high school and my girls there still all want the exact same body type--as thin as they can get.

I think this broadening of tastes as we age is fairly normal. When I look back at myself in high school, there was one type of guy I found cute. Anything different than that ideal was "meh". Now, there are all kinds of men I find attractive, and many of them look very different from each other.

Children assume that something has to be "the best" and that makes everything else inferior. It takes the perspective of adulthood to appreciate how things can be different as cheese and chalk but still both pleasing.

Hmm...yeah, you're right, maybe it's MY perspective that has broadened (along with my hips ;) ) rather than a general expansion of ideals of beauty.

On the other hand, I can't think of any '70s and '80s sex symbols who were analogous to Katy Perry, Dita von Teese, or Christina Hendricks--that more voluptuous or hourglass-like body type seemed to disappear altogether. Maybe that's part of my own skewed view, though, and maybe I looked around and only saw the reed-thin bodies because that was what I wished I could be.

You're absolutely right about having only one ideal. I remember having that perspective. I think I lost that outlook in my mid-20s, more in self-defense than anything else.

Hot topics are fun! But to me, sometimes "curvy" is actually describing "lumpy". However, nothing is more beautiful than vibrant, good health....no matter what the shape.

LOL! And, um, yeah: I couldn't agree with this more.

Yes, but at 34 I can understand that lumpy can be pretty good in bed, and that a man can enjoy a shapely butt and rack and just . . .not pay attention . . .to the lower stomach roll. At 16, I though, literally, that no man would ever want me if I wasn't perfect, with perfect being "can't pinch an inch anywhere except the boobs--and they better be standing tall". Like, I thought a guy would vomit if he saw me naked because I had a non-flat stomach. And I don't mean a big, saggy stomach--just one that was a little convex.

Now I can see a woman (or a man) with a few areas that could be better, and still think the overall person is hot as ****. As a teen, that was unthinkable: if you weren't perfect, you were an object of pity at best and scorn at worst.