This stupid fucking bikini picture.

Ok, I told myself I wouldn't say anything unless this kept popping up, but it keeps popping so....

I hate this picture. Hate it. For starters, let's talk about the message. Most people I've seen post it seem to walk away thinking that the message is anti anorexia moderation, but it ain't. It's clearly 4 skinny chicks on top, and 4 not skinny chicks on bottom, and one group is supposed to be hotter then the other. The captioning doesn't state "let's all have a confidant body image!" It clearly says "When did these skinny bitches grab the spotlight from us curvy women!?" The only thing you're changing is Which image insecure women obsess over. You go from having women living on pure carrot diets in order to hit a size zero to women getting Fix-a-Flat injected into their ass in order to have curves. Yes, this actually happened. Nothing in this image changes the problem of women obsessing over how men see them, the obvious robotic distortions post production and photoshop put on every single model and magazine cover actress. It just says SKINNY BAD, NOT SKINNY GOOD.

My other problem is the 4 chosen women on top. The "wrong" women who have somehow mistakenly been perceived as hot, but who really pale in comparison to the ones underneath them. Nicole Richie and whatever the name of that other half plastic moron is, I can't speak for them, but 2 of those women, I'm pretty sure, are just naturally skinny. I'm not Dr. Oz, but I'm pretty sure when you're severely underweight and you wear a bikini, you show off ribs, not a six pack. Also, looking at Kirsten Dunst I just see someone who's skinny. Not anemic, or sickly, or anorexic, just really skinny.

"But Brett" you say, "How can you relate to this, being a male, and a big male at that." Well, this big male is married to someone who clocks in closer to Kirsten Dunst then any of those other women, and I think she's pretty hot. She has the added bonus of a strong body image and a lot of self confidence, which helped her a lot during her teenage years when people often mistook her, quite rudely and to her face, as someone with an eating disorder. I have to assume that, when you're a 13 year old girl, being frequently told you're too skinny is just as uncomfortable as being told you're not skinny enough.

And make no mistake, everyone of those teenage and pre-teenage girls, everyone of them who is naturally skinny, who has a high metabolism, They all see this picture on various facebook feeds and they all identify with the top 4 girls, they all identify with Kirsten Dunst and Kiera Knightley and the implication of this image that there's something Wrong with that.

This picture doesn't strike me as liberating, or empowering, it really strikes me as women who are not skinny hating on women who are. That's not fixing the problem that everyone who shares and 'likes' this picture seems to want to fix, it's just trading it for another problem.