
"The Victorian age with its women's waif-like waist lines of 18 inches and its pear-shaped hips adorning all adorable and desirable beauties of the fairer sex has much more to answer for in the annals of British history than all the colonisation and exploitation of its Commonwealth and overseas territories.
Often, one of the gravest exploitations in society spring from mankind's desire to shape the pattern of 'ideal' womanhood and the image of 'female perfection'.
I recently had access to a few magazines that literally shocked my senses. I refer not to those 'top-shelf men-mags' to be often found within the reach of most testosterone-driven teenagers, but those magazines that seemingly cater for the tastes and interests of young girls and 'teeny weenies' who have hardly been long enough upon the voyage of pubity to recognise the many masculine snares along the way.
However much these magazines for young girls tend to dress it up, their underlying message of promotional female fashion is 'less means more' in the beauty stakes of male desirability. No wonder that the incidence of young girls dieting and being overconcerned by their weight and shape is daily increasing and that the young girl who carries those few extra pounds around her waistline is the butt of peer bullying and self deprecation, even in the playground.
For any family member who has ever experienced the physical and emotional trauma of having to cope with the self-starvation of any daughter, sister or niece displaying annorexia nervosa, they will know how hard the condition is to overcome and control. To have one's teenage child stood there as thin as an inmate from Auschwitz Concentration Camp while genuinely believing that they are too fat and ugly is not an experience that any parent should ever have to face. To have to bury one's child before they have reached the age of maturity is an experience beyond the realms of parental endurance.
Isn't it time that all page-three models were consigned to the bin of everyday trash, along with the banishing of those expensive silly girly magazines and all television and other advertising which inappropriately sexualises and debases the image of females? I cannot believe that a comparable 'sexualisation' of males in society would ever have been seriously considered, let alone tolerated and even promoted." William Forde: October 13th, 2014.