Proud to be more than 32 Kilos

70 pounds. That's how much 10-year-old girls are supposed to weigh, not 20-something women. German photographer Ivonne Thein tries to get that point across in "Thirty-Two Kilos," a photo collection that shows what women would look like if they weighed 32 kilos or roughly 70 pounds.

For this collection, Thein photographed normal sized models and then used Photoshop to make them look like they weighed 70 pounds. According to The Washington Post, Thein chose 70 pounds as the magic number after a 70-pound French actress posed nude for an anti-anorexia ad.

The overall inspiration for Thein's work was pro-anorexia Web sites. The Post article said that these Web sites allow girls to offer encouragement for one another's starvation and also provide weight-loss tips. Thein was disgusted, and I am, too.

I guess I never thought that there might be pro-anorexia sites on the Internet. Too many times I have heard about girls struggling with the disease, so I don't want to believe that there are sites out there to embrace it. According to the Post, the girls on these sites want people to consider anorexia as a lifestyle; they want people to see their starvation efforts as being an okay practice.

I truly hope that some of the girls who are part of these Web sites see Thein's pictures. The fragile-looking and gauze-covered models look so gross. I can't even look at most of the pictures without cringing or being afraid that the model's arm or leg will just suddenly break. (Check out Thien's 14-picture set here.)

Apparently, some of these pro-anorexia girls have seen these sites and are actually jealous of the digitally enhanced (or destroyed) models. To me, that is unfathomable, but maybe that just shows that our culture has put an emphasis on thinness over healthiness for way too long.