Hunger as a luxury symbol - Yearning for the lean

Surprisingly many models and Hollywood stars are simultaneously infected with a new virus. They don't make themselves scarce, but more and more often thin. They don't just lose weight, they practically dissolve. Because they have become good food converters overnight, can suddenly eat what they want and, as if by magic, do not gain weight, but lose 10 to 20 kg - starting from an already very slim figure.
The excitement should be great at the latest when girls starve themselves to death in public - but it stays within model dimensions. In the end, the allegedly artistic taste 'wins', which makes the models pure bearers of 'art' - the fact that a few die in the process is known from the times of Leonardo da Vinci, where small children painted in gold suffocated miserably after the royal performances were completed.
Anorexia has not only lost the horror of a life-threatening disease, but has even gained public acceptance. It is no longer hidden under thick sweaters and various layers of trousers, but is flaunted on catwalks and red carpets.
To make matters worse, being thin also influences the self-perception of most 'normal' women - the non-celebs and non-models. Women no longer accept their own weight, with which they were slim enough two years ago. Ideals are currently being corrected downwards in every respect. Not only in the USA are there now size 30 and smaller - and in some luxury boutiques 38 is considered a 'large size'!
As with any other addiction, rational arguments have little chance: You know about the damage, but you are still fascinated. Of course, the women will not all become super thin because of this - but the acceptance of the normal will be even more difficult than most women already find it.
How is it that women who are far too thin are considered beautiful today? Why are 43kg and less suddenly no longer sick, but desirable? rheingold can identify four key reasons why being thin is so attractive right now.

1. Psychological aimlessness

Today's women can become anything - they have the widest range of roles in the history of Western culture. But they have no role models - they don't know how to really implement all that they could become. They cannot decide on a role, do many things at the same time, but do not really commit themselves. Physically, this 'psychological aimlessness' finds its expression in childlike, unwomanly forms - because the decision to become a 'real woman' is not made either. With 'starvation cures', the development of womanhood is even turned back again: women turn themselves back into girls from whom everything is theoretically still possible.

2. Luxurious being lean

Being lean is currently primarily associated with luxury - with Hollywood, models and wealth. Not least because of this, it is seen as beautiful by many women. Beauty was and is always also luxurious - something that not everyone could afford, for which you had to take time. As long as hard work was associated with tan, a white complexion was considered beautiful. But if it means luxury to move outdoors, the tan becomes the ideal of beauty. So where food exists in abundance for all classes - being lean becomes a luxury. As paradoxical as it sounds, eating little and low in calories and doing extreme sports, i.e. being able to devote oneself almost exclusively to one's body, means having a lot of time. Time that you simply have to be able to afford - in addition to your job, your family and other obligations.

3. Suffering sensuality

Anyone who wants to be beautiful has always had to suffer - Chinese crippled feet, African tower skulls, Burmese giraffe necks, knocked out front teeth in South Sudan, American-European silicone breasts - are just a few examples. The self-destructive nature of the new addiction to being thin is therefore not a truly unique aspect of the current ideal of slimness. Voluntary hunger offers women an opportunity to go through something again in their lives, to feel themselves again - something immediately tangible physically. In air-conditioned rooms, with standardised food and lifestyles that are not very challenging to the senses, hunger means a form of immediacy that most people have lost in the age of de-sensualisation.

4. Delusional controllability

Women feel more responsible than ever for their beauty. They are less and less happy with physical 'givens', but create themselves according to existing ideal concepts. To do this, they are increasingly resorting to the existing medical and cosmetic potential. Physical realities are subordinated to what is theoretically and practically feasible. The new anorexia increases the control fantasies to the limit of life. The 'game' with death can be seen as the last bastion of the delusion of creation to be conquered. Size Zero women not only control their hunger, they feel powerful and untouchable. While other models die of 'malnutrition', they prove every day that they can actually 'defeat' death.

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