TV Anchors: lose weight or get fired
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| Wed, 03-21-2007 - 9:19am |
This was all over our news in the past few days (for anyone that doesn't know, I live in Egypt)
The two major local TV channels pulled their overweight female anchors off the air... gave them one month to lose weight... if they were not successful, the will not go back on air.
This really crushed me. I was somehow proud that we show people of all sizes on our television (well on the local channels at least). Some of these are brilliant women. And I don't believe they actually announced this decision, as if in pride. This is plain discrimination in my opinion. There are a lot of skinny girls on the air who are really air-heads.. why didn't they get rid of those? Give them a month to get educated or something. I am not saying that all skinny girls there are air-headed, but there is a portion that are and are only there because of their looks.
BTW there are overweight male anchors, but this was only done with female anchors. And that's another vent





Ouch! The double standard that exists is so hard to ignore! I think one of the saddest things that I've realized is how awful other women are about a person's weight! If it was only men who insisted on the skinny ideal it would still be offensive, but often women are worse about it. Here overweight female celebrities are constantly the butt of jokes, even if they lose weight! Huh? Such hypocrisy given the obesity rates that exist. Most people must be close to someone who is obese, how can they be so openly critical?
Seems like an impossible task for one month's time. Completely unfair!
Annie
Angela