Violent Femmes

So it's not exactly news to say that women sometimes don't like other women for no apparent reason. I, as the Quail's sole editorial board member lacking a Y chromosome and a recovering "alpha mean girl," can personally vouch for not liking other women for such nonsensical reasons as "she can't seriously think it's okay to wear a scrunchie after 1991" and "well, she just looks like a bitch."

I have never, however, disliked another woman being skinnier than me for fear that she may dominate me. Where am I getting such a wacky proposition? Jezebel.com has a review of an article appearing in December 2007's UK vogue in which British GQ Features Director Alex Bilmes tells us why women worry about their weight: to impress and oppress other women. Bilmes argues that men don't care about women's weights nearly as much as other women (and in fact, find "weight fascism" a turn off), and the real reason why women are so weight-sensitive is because women need to feel better than other women. Weight is merely a stratifying trope that women use to determine the alphas from the betas from the, well, everyone else. Check out the Telegraph's edited version of Bilmes' piece here.

On a personal note, I find it refreshing to hear that men don't care nearly as much about weight as women do. As a lady who lunches with her fellow female students two or three times a week, I find it wholly frustrating to hear "if I get that, I'll really have to work out at the gym this afternoon!" six times before the waitress even gets our drink order. My philosphy, generally speaking, is you only live once, so why not get the Riesling and the Chilean sea bass with the reduction sauce? (This may explain why I'm a spinster, but I really like reduction sauces.) I think women are more weight-conscious because men tend to like skinnier\leaner\smaller women, so women size themselves up to other women as a way of gauging how attractive they are to potential partners. Men may not dig actually hearing that women are super-body conscious, but when it comes down to it, all that body mania is for men--for women to see how hot they are and how they stack up to their potential competition in other women. For example, men may not understand why women get their eyebrows waxed, but they notice a difference between the waxed and arched eyebrow and totally untouched eyebrow.

Getting back to the article, Bilmes seems to be letting men off light in his analysis. Men may not care as much as women, but they do care...otherwise, America Ferrara (bless her heart) and Emily Blunt (to the right-- not her best photo, but she's gorgeous and sadly, had to lose weight to be in "The Devil Wears Prada") would be Googled by straight men as much as Jessica Biel and Megan Fox.*

But I want to hear your thoughts. Boys, girls -- tell me how it is.

* I picked their names at random off Maxim.com. I have no clue how often their images are Googled by straight men.