At last, some common sense may be about to prevail in the overheated and often hysterical so-called 'Size Zero Debate' of which I have been such an outspoken critic in this blog.
It turns out that the BMI (on the basis of which Ken Livingstone and others considered banning thin models from London Fashion Week) is inaccurate and may not mean that someone with a supposedly 'underweight' BMI of below 18 is unhealthy. Well - tell me something I don't know!
An article in today's 'Independent on Sunday' (8 April 2007 Home News http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2432469.ece) refers to a new measuring system, the BVI, which is a more accurate test of someone's weight as a guide to health. I'll try not to go on (although I am crowing in triumph) but just give you two of the examples quoted in the article:
- Maria Sharapova, tennis player. Supposedly underweight with a BMI of 17.6 and therefore both unhealthy and verging on the anorexic by standard criteria - obviously nonsense as tennis is a rather demanding sport, but then when has common sense entered this debate up until now? Under the new, more accurate BVI measuring system, she is perfectly healthy - which should have been obvious from both her appearance and occupation.
- Jonny Wilkinson, rugby player. With a BMI of 26.7, he was 'overweght and verging on obese' - a bit of a joke if you've ever seen him. The BVI test would again show that he is perfectly healthy and has no need whatsoever to cut down on his eating.
So let's hope this message gets through to the various idiotic fuckwits who have jumped on this bandwagon. May it also put an end to the media barrage of anti-size zero publicity that has been equating size zero with being anorexic.
The new BVI will apparently show, quite clearly, when someone actually is anorexic. Of course, it would be too much to expect the various special interest and lobby groups with their funding and jobs dependent on scaremongering to be gracious about this. The old Eating Disorders Association (now re-named Beat for some reason that entirely escapes me) were ' cautious about whether people could be helped by the results of a [BVI] scan. "People with eating disorders can know they are severely underweight but are less frightened of death than by the idea of having lunch", said Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of BEAT.'
Then, in classic illogical fashion, and despite the EDA's protracted assault on size zero women as being somehow responsible for causing eating disorders, Ringwood actually confirms what I have been arguing all along: 'The mind is so distorted in these cases so that one cannot apply logic'.
Seems that this lack of logic also applies to those organisations and individuals representing those with eating disorders for whom slim women have, up til now, been the easy target to blame in our nationwide victim culture. Please God, the media and the do-gooders will now realise that anorexia is entirely different to slimness and get off size zero's backs.
