Leah McLaren on "Real Women

I have this sadistic obsession with Leah McLaren. I absolutely cannot stand the woman and yet for some reason I feel compelled to read her self-centered ramblings every Saturday in the Globe's lifestyle section. This weekly confrontation started some time ago, about three years, and while I generally find her to be inane and annoying, I rarely find her offensive. Today's column, however, changed that.

Apparently Ms. McLaren recently went to a focus group for Special K and decided to write about it, with stunning results. First she spends seven paragraphs berating the kind of women who would actually attend such a focus group, firmly establishing her societal supremacy over them. (Ms. McLaren was there obviously for research). She then launches an attack on fat or 'real' women and compares them to wild boars!?!?!?

Here’s a quote:

“As a member of the media, I’m not buying it. I know people who work at fashion magazines, I write a column in a Style section. I know why fashion editors choose skinny models rather than ‘real women’ to wear the clothes in their editorial pages: Because no matter what they say, women don’t want to buy magazines or newspapers with pictures of real women with friendly smiles looking sweet and lumpy in their cardigans on the cover. Hell no.

"Real women want pictures of beautiful 18-year-old models looking thin and perfect. If they didn’t, Vogue wouldn’t be the megasuccess that it is.

“Sure, It’s unrealistic, but it’s also the nature of the fashion industry. It sells a fantasy, something to aspire to, not a self-help solution to lingering adolescent insecurities. If women wanted to look at photos of wild boars in Prada suits, Vogue would run photos of wild boars in Prada suits.”

Part of me wants to not even respond to this, I mean really her words speak for themselves, no? However, in the interest of conversation building I will point out a couple of key things that bothered me (besides the fat women = wild boars thing).

I’m not going to pretend to know what people do or do not want in a fashion magazine, the only fashion mag I ever pick up is Toronto Fashion and that’s only because it comes with my monthly subscription to Toronto Life. Even when it does come I may glance at it, see if there is anything of note, and then it goes straight to the recycling bin.

What I can say is that Ms. McLaren does not speak for everyone. I would not be turned off by the sight of some bigger gals in a fashion mag and I honestly think that, in the words on John Lennon “I’m not the only one.”

Another particularly offensive selection: “Sure, It’s unrealistic, but it’s also the nature of the fashion industry. It sells a fantasy, something to aspire to."

Ohhhhh, where to begin? A Fantasy? Something to aspire to? So we should all be aspiring to be a size 0? So any women who are overweight and perfectly happy are somehow abnormal because they don’t go home every night and fantasize about looking like Kate Moss? (Actually that’s not fair, Kate Moss gets picked on way to much, any pencil thin model will do, she just happens to be the only one I can think of right now)

And the best part: “a self-help solution to lingering adolescent insecurities.” That’s right everybody, you heard it here first. All you women out there suffering from anorexia, bulimia or otherwise crippling body image issues your problems are nothing more than lingering adolescent insecurities!!! She just really whittled it right down there didn’t she? Though I'm not really surprised, in a world as trivial and shallow as Leah's everything deserves to be treated as such.

I can't imagine that McLaren did not know that this would be offensive to a number of people, men or women, 'real' or not. One would think that someone with a national audience in a major newspaper would have a little more sense than to write such a derogatory and disturbing column. Me thinks Leah needs to go back to writing about her house in the country and how Sex and the City stole her life. Leave the social commentary for people with half a moral backbone.

For anyone who wants to read the column in full it was in the Globe’s Style section (L3) on Saturday, Jan 28 2006 (only available online by subscription), I can imagine that the globe will receive a number of letters regarding this one.

Sorry for the rant, in this my very first blog, but it was just somthing I had to get off my very ample (real) chest.