Secondly, sometimes I think we ought to revive the concept of noblesse oblige. Those of us who are wealthy/intelligent/influential have a duty to broader society to set a good example. Proudly parading your grotesquely ultra thin body is not really doing as such.
Thirdly, please can we have more of those group zoom discussions for paid subscribers 🙏🙏
Missing context which is Lily Collins’s notorious portrayal of anorexia in To the Bone, admitted past history of the illness & then working with a dietician to get back down to extreme lows. On the pro ana message boards she’s a known entity
The "she's not glamorizing, she's just a glamorous woman posting a photograph" defense doesn't work for me. It sounds way too much like "I didn't hit my brother, I was just swinging my fist and he happened to be in the wrong place." We are held culpable for the easily foreseeable consequences of our actions, not just the intended consequences.
The photos of Lily Collins are not holiday snaps shared with her friends, and they are not paparazzi shots taken without her consent. A team of people worked to create them and edit them, presumably with Lily's input. She had a direct interest in the campaign being successful, in terms of getting more work as a model and in developing her personal brand (which she profits from, and presumably manages deliberately).
I don't mean that Lily is the only person at fault here. The Algorithm further promotes content that gets a lot of engagement, even if it is negative. Probably this campaign was more successful than if she had been equally attractive but less controversially thin. In that way, I think the developers of social media are culpable for the outcomes too.
“This follows in part from the fact that gaining fat is really easy for most of us, it’s not something people typically have to try at.”
As someone who has struggled with childhood cancer related feeding disorders and who has had times in their life where it was a genuine battle to get the calories in, this feels like an odd state of affairs. The default state of affairs is not eating - eating actively requires earning money, purchasing food, preparing it and physically eating it. If you’re someone who isn’t particularly keen on food, that’s a lot of effort to go to for something you may not enjoy and may in fact actively dislike.
This isn’t necessarily to disparage those who struggle - one perk of skewing on the side of not eating enough is that you don’t need to be as careful about what you eat, so I haven’t particularly faced the issues of specifically having to deny yourself pleasures. From the perspective of an outsider looking in though, it’s still rather amusing to see people treat it this way.
Oof this hit home a bit — people really do feel way too comfortable commenting on other bodies, even when they “mean well.” I liked how she explained that skinny shaming is still shaming, just a different flavor. Honestly it made me think about how common this stuff is (I heard something similar when a friend was doing a rotation at Charité University Hospital (https://bookclinics.com/germany/berlin/charit-universittsmedizin-berlin) and how it just gets brushed off. I wish we all learned to just keep our body opinions to ourselves lol.
Shouldn’t the criticism be directed at the people making these photos and publishing them? Ms. Collins, regardless of her weight, is just doing a job, if she refused it they’d hire another extremely skinny woman to do it.
1. While fashion photography is, almost by definition, aspirational, you can also find a reason to bitch about the body type of any human if you look hard enough "she's too skinny/fat, she's unrealistically tall or too mesomorphic or doesn't have the 'right' number of limbs or whatever."
2. Why does the author insist that all cats are female? We are not all female.
Oh myy, it's been so long! Great to have you back!
Thank you! Good to be back :)
Firstly, great to have you back!
Secondly, sometimes I think we ought to revive the concept of noblesse oblige. Those of us who are wealthy/intelligent/influential have a duty to broader society to set a good example. Proudly parading your grotesquely ultra thin body is not really doing as such.
Thirdly, please can we have more of those group zoom discussions for paid subscribers 🙏🙏
Thank you! Yes, I will plan something - time to revive book club or something similar.
Missing context which is Lily Collins’s notorious portrayal of anorexia in To the Bone, admitted past history of the illness & then working with a dietician to get back down to extreme lows. On the pro ana message boards she’s a known entity
The "she's not glamorizing, she's just a glamorous woman posting a photograph" defense doesn't work for me. It sounds way too much like "I didn't hit my brother, I was just swinging my fist and he happened to be in the wrong place." We are held culpable for the easily foreseeable consequences of our actions, not just the intended consequences.
The photos of Lily Collins are not holiday snaps shared with her friends, and they are not paparazzi shots taken without her consent. A team of people worked to create them and edit them, presumably with Lily's input. She had a direct interest in the campaign being successful, in terms of getting more work as a model and in developing her personal brand (which she profits from, and presumably manages deliberately).
I don't mean that Lily is the only person at fault here. The Algorithm further promotes content that gets a lot of engagement, even if it is negative. Probably this campaign was more successful than if she had been equally attractive but less controversially thin. In that way, I think the developers of social media are culpable for the outcomes too.
“This follows in part from the fact that gaining fat is really easy for most of us, it’s not something people typically have to try at.”
As someone who has struggled with childhood cancer related feeding disorders and who has had times in their life where it was a genuine battle to get the calories in, this feels like an odd state of affairs. The default state of affairs is not eating - eating actively requires earning money, purchasing food, preparing it and physically eating it. If you’re someone who isn’t particularly keen on food, that’s a lot of effort to go to for something you may not enjoy and may in fact actively dislike.
This isn’t necessarily to disparage those who struggle - one perk of skewing on the side of not eating enough is that you don’t need to be as careful about what you eat, so I haven’t particularly faced the issues of specifically having to deny yourself pleasures. From the perspective of an outsider looking in though, it’s still rather amusing to see people treat it this way.
Growing up very thin I was constantly picked on for it?? Is that shaming or is it different?
Oof this hit home a bit — people really do feel way too comfortable commenting on other bodies, even when they “mean well.” I liked how she explained that skinny shaming is still shaming, just a different flavor. Honestly it made me think about how common this stuff is (I heard something similar when a friend was doing a rotation at Charité University Hospital (https://bookclinics.com/germany/berlin/charit-universittsmedizin-berlin) and how it just gets brushed off. I wish we all learned to just keep our body opinions to ourselves lol.
Shouldn’t the criticism be directed at the people making these photos and publishing them? Ms. Collins, regardless of her weight, is just doing a job, if she refused it they’d hire another extremely skinny woman to do it.
Welcome back. A really interesting perspective!
This fat women/skinny women/shaming/not shaming discourse sounds like an absolute minefield for males of the species to stray into!
Welcome back!
Thank you! I’ve missed substackistan
We've missed you! Hoping you bring back the podcast as well.
Moral Mayhem incoming for 2026
1. While fashion photography is, almost by definition, aspirational, you can also find a reason to bitch about the body type of any human if you look hard enough "she's too skinny/fat, she's unrealistically tall or too mesomorphic or doesn't have the 'right' number of limbs or whatever."
2. Why does the author insist that all cats are female? We are not all female.
1. Very true, and the “right” number of limbs is obviously 7.
2. Tom cats are a different species.
You make me a pervert?