{"id":4175,"date":"2013-05-12T16:29:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-12T21:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4175"},"modified":"2013-05-12T16:29:29","modified_gmt":"2013-05-12T21:29:29","slug":"heres-the-skinny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4175","title":{"rendered":"Here’s the skinny"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Michael Jeffries, attractive man<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Putzing\u00c2\u00a0around the internets the other day I ran across an example of an interesting and very common kind of downplayer.\u00c2\u00a0 Some context, the\u00c2\u00a0CEO of Abercrombie and\u00c2\u00a0Fitch (see above), a\u00c2\u00a0clothing retailer, has claimed he only wants to sell clothes to thin, attractive people<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong (in our clothes), and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So he’s a jerk.\u00c2\u00a0 Now comes the downplayer.\u00c2\u00a0 Reacting to the story, Shana Lebowitz <\/a>of Greatist writes:<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truly incredible that these news stories have sparked such intense conversations about the way the media helps shape our relationship to our bodies. At the same time,\u00c2\u00a0it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too easy to point fingers at Abercrombie and media outlets that glorify the thin ideal.<\/strong> Sometimes it seems like all we need<\/strong> is a couple of models and mannequins who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stick-thin and everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body image would significantly improve.<\/p>\n

But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too easy. In reality, skinny models and mannequins don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t\u00c2\u00a0cause<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0anyone to feel any way about their bodies<\/strong>. While we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always control the size of the T-shirts on Abercrombie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shelves, we do have the power to walk through the overly cologned aisles without feeling bad about ourselves. So\u00c2\u00a0why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we arm people with the psychological tools to develop a healthy body image\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201d even in spite of messages that can damage our self-esteem?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps it is easy to latch onto this guy’s sorry but unsurprising attitude about attractiveness, popularity, and so on.\u00c2\u00a0 But really, so what?\u00c2\u00a0 Things that are easy, however, not any the less true or worthwhile on account of their ease.<\/p>\n

Further, note how the downplayer turns into a straw man: tweaking one or two things about stores or clothes sizes will not solve every single problem!\u00c2\u00a0 No kidding!\u00c2\u00a0 Who says it would?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Putzing\u00c2\u00a0around the internets the other day I ran across an example of an interesting and very common kind of downplayer.\u00c2\u00a0 Some context, the\u00c2\u00a0CEO of Abercrombie and\u00c2\u00a0Fitch (see above), a\u00c2\u00a0clothing retailer, has claimed he only wants to sell clothes to thin, attractive people: “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there … Continue reading Here’s the skinny<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[730,1650,1651,1964],"class_list":["post-4175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-downplayers","tag-mike-jeffries","tag-shana-lebowitz","tag-straw-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4177,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4175\/revisions\/4177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}