Paul Campos nails it again

[firecat]

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/feb/27/campos-the-weight-of-a-cruel-culture/

Consider Hollywood's current It Girl, Keira Knightley. Knightley has a body mass that places her in the second percentile of the population. If her weight were to deviate as radically in the other direction - in other words if she were in the 98th percentile of body mass - she would weigh approximately 300 pounds.

Yet Knightley is presented by our media-industrial complex as a completely natural object of male desire, while men attracted to 300-pound women are considered to be in the grip of a bizarre fetish. (Meanwhile the archetypal male sex symbol Brad Pitt has a BMI of 27, which also happens to be the average BMI of middle-aged American men).

PS: Definitely skip the comments. Campos has a set of trolls that follow him around.

Comments

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

(Meanwhile the archetypal male sex symbol Brad Pitt has a BMI of 27, which also happens to be the average BMI of middle-aged American men).

Which is a bit misleading, because Pitt's body is, I would guess, in a fairly low percentile range of body fat percentage, as he is quite thoroughly buffed.

The point Campos is making is spot-on, but he should know better than to use BMI here.