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Comment by nsajko | Hacker News Reader

> some jurisdictions have tackled models whose body fat percentage is dangerously low [...]

What are you talking about here?

> unhealthily large muscles

Taking steroids and other activities related to bodybuilding and sports more generally can sure take their toll, but I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.

> most body builders are unhealthy low in fat

Source?

> But of course, that is not what they desire, for that falls under what they consider to be their conventional ideal of beauty [...]

Aren't you contradicting your point now? Or maybe I misunderstood what your point is?

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> What are you talking about here?

Some jurisdictions do not allow models under a certain b.m.i. to be commercially featured:

https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/06/counties-fighting-underw...

> Taking steroids and other activities related to bodybuilding and sports more generally can sure take their toll, but I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.

They do, their low body fat can't support them and they suffer from a myriad of complications.

Even if they had the body fat to support them, such as in many professional athletes, the strain to achieve them is not particularly healthy.

> Source?

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/legendary-bodybuilder-died-bod...

As the article says, professional body builders often go in the 3-to-5% body fat range, which is very unhealthy.

> Aren't you contradicting your point now? Or maybe I misunderstood what your point is?

Not at all; — I'm saying that “health” is but a convenient excuse to ban what the authoritarian considers not socially desirable, in this case for an ideal of beauty, whereas he is fine with letting stand that which he considers beautiful, no matter how unhealthy it might be.

About the Euronews link, I disagree with your conclusion. The mentioned laws are just red tape (for an explanation see my reply to pacaro here). The hard limits on BMI seem to come from industry self-regulation.

Let's assume that be the case.

The politicians allow this nonsensical, pseudoscientific self-regulation instead of demanding that they switch to b.f.p., because they know well that it would outlaw body builders, which they do not want, despite their being as unhealthy.

The industry came up with this method, of course, to allow bodybuilders to continue, and only having to cull the the hyperthin.

It's a nice unspoken understanding between them that enables both to place the blame on the other.

If the industry had found such a clever way to allow the hyperthin to still continue, one could be certain of that the politicians would step in to order a halt to it.

I think you're hugely overestimating the politicians here, I doubt that even a significant proportion gives much thought to these issues ;)

And thought woud suddenly be given if the industry's self-regulation found a way to permit the models they want to ban because they think them too ugly.

Indeed, not much thought was given: they found certain models to look ugly because they were hyperthin, so they instinctively searched for a rationalization to ban them and selling it as something other than social control, and “health” is very often the first excuse to be reached for then.

Nah. Bodybuilders are fat by mbi. BMI is or was used also in context that where it literally harmed bodybuilders - by BMI they are fat.

Politicians doing these decisions dont go too deep. BMI is widely know, easy to calculate metric everybody knows. And that is all there is to it.

But the politicians aren't banning overweight models, only underweight models.

I'm sure these same politicians have medical advisors, who advised them against using b.m.i. and also pointed out what I said here.

> I'm sure these same politicians have medical advisors, who advised them against using b.m.i. and also pointed out what I said here.

Body builders, especially female body builders were completely irrelevant to discussion about fashion models. They were not the ones who were ever shown in those magazines. In terms of body shape, they are not actually thin despite having low fat.

Female body builders are not contemporary beauty standard and never were.

And why do you suddenly bring gender politics into an issue that never had them?

Many magazines feature body builders, whatever their sex be, that have a body fat percentage that is very unhealthy and were it not for the muscles to move their mass up, the fat percentage alone would give them a rather low b.m.i. if they had average muscles.

I do not see how their sex is relevant for the politician's stated goal of promoting health.

If their desire would be to only promote female health, male health be damned, then they should have said so, which they obviously never did, as that would raise quite the eyebrows.

But their real desire was, as said, simply to ban models whom they find particularly ugly, and “health” is simply an excuse, as it often is. — the very same reason why arbitrarily alcohol is quite legal in many jurisdictions where other drugs are banned for “health concerns”.

So many unhealthy things are perfectly legal almost everywhere that I find any politician who claims to do it for the health dubious by default. — it is nothing more than a rationalization to justify his moral and fashion control.

> but I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.

There is actually a body dysmorphic disorder called Muscle dysmorphia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_dysmorphia). It is pretty easy to see the similarities of similar disorders.

In general I would also suspect a higher rate of injuries related to those exercise that maintain that large muscle mass, and potential risk factors in regard to diet.

The existence of a disorder means little more than that a psychiatrist has given it a name; it has nothing to do with the actual existence of the symptoms so named in the disorder.

No doubt symptoms for virtually any desire to have something with one's body exist. Personally, I am unnaturally obsessive with my haircut and even the smallest imperfections with it that only I can see annoy me to no end with no one else seeing the difference. — I am quite certain that if this were more common, some psychiatrist would give it a name, and thus it would “exist” as a disorder. Regardless of such nomenclature, the symptoms exist in at least one man, and probably many more.

> I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.

Well, you're wrong. Your heart has to work harder to pump blood whether you are 300 lbs of muscle or 300 lbs of fat, it doesn't matter. This is well-known, so maybe do a little research?

Is the amount of work your heart has to do at issue here? Can you point to some articles talking about this?

France, Italy, Spain, and Israel all have laws about the weight of fashion models. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39821036

Indeed, weight. — they all use b.m.i. as an indicator, rather than the far more reliable b.f.p., because they are hampered by the fact that the latter, correctly, indicates that most body builders are very unhealthy, and the former, as one of it's many problems, fails to correctly indicate that, or even indicates that they are overweight, when they are severely underweight.

And correct science is a politician's greatest enemy, for it demonstrates that his ideals and morality are arbitrary, and that the explanations he proffers to substantiate his moral control are purely ad hoc.

The very reason they choose b.m.i. is because it was never about healthy, as they proffered, but about subjective æsthetics standards, so they needed a scale that indicated that, rather than health, all the while masking as one that was reflective of health.

That's just red tape.

That is, if you're a model, you just have to get a doctor to "certify you healthy", which I'm sure isn't at all difficult as they can pick any doctor. Note that the modelling agency will probably "help" with this, as it's very much in their interest to do so. And note the quote from BBC: "But the final version, backed by MPs 2015, allows doctors to decide whether a model is too thin by taking into account their weight, age, and body shape." (so the decision is arbitrary).

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