This is model Katie H. Willcox. She's 5'9" and 165lbs, which puts her BMI index at 24.4. According to that she is just barely within the normal weight range, but still within the normal range. She's not obese, she's not overweight, she's normal. And that doesn't even take into account her pretty nose to the grindstone work out regime, which, if you know anything about BMI, means that it's quite likely she is well within a healthy body fat percentage because of added muscle weight throwing the BMI out.
This is yet another model named Katie Green. She's 5'10" and a US size 10. Sure she's bigger than your average model, but she's not even plus size, and slightly smaller than your average woman. Factoring in her height and clothing size, her BMI is probably lower than Katie H. She is still well within what is scientifically considered a normal, healthy size.
This last woman, pictured here (sorry for the link guys the image wasn't the right size or something) is Heidi Ricketson at 5'4" and 150lbs, she does figure competitions. This is her "before" photo where she has bulked on the muscle but hasn't crash dieted the fat off yet. Based on BMI she is slightly in the overweight range but considering she is a body builder this is less applicable. I will consider her, as the other 2, just inside of the normal weight range.
I have chosen 3 very fit, healthy, active and diet concious women who represent the average size of a woman in the US, about a size 12. The models are taller, of course, and well models and the average woman is also not a body builder. But the average woman does sit on the line between being considered normal vs overweight. There really is no health risk associated with this size of a person, especially if the person is like any pictured above, where they keep in good shape, eat well, and have a lot of lean muscle mass.
The GaG Polling
So I asked if these women were skinny (link to GaG question), not expecting anyone to actually agree, but to see how our descriptions of size actually compare to relatively average, relatively healthy size.
It turns out, not terrible lol. Roughly 30% considered one or more of them to be skinny, and 7% considered them to all be fat. The majority of people (55%) considered them not skinny, but did not choose to label them all as fat although the option was there. (Poll percentages are so far as the question is still open).
In the comments while many people did describe them as normal, healthy, and average, some people described them as fat and out of shape.The impression I got from most of the comments was that all of these women were walking a fine invisible line between just right and totally fat and undesirable. The line between normal and overweight. While there were a handful that considered them already past that line only two bothered to comment to the effect that they actually were skinny.
My Two Cents
While I was pleasantly surprised by the actual results, which support that despite media images the preference is still for realistic looking women and most people have a decent sense of what that is, I am still a little disapointed. Not in anything I can really pinpoint, just disapointed. I guess it's better than nothing that our society, or at least our little GaG community, mostly has realistic expectations of womens bodies.
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