After reading similar subject matter on other blogs and finally seeing it on television, I feel compelled to comment on the supermodel-in-a-fatsuit experiment.

I watched a Rebecca Mader this morning on the Today Show, descibing how vastly different her life became for a period of hours as she donned a "fat suit" and roamed the streets of the city. She described instances in which people on the street and in the subway called her "fat" to her face and in her head.

Couldn't stand that, huh sweetheart? That is the whole damn reason many perfectly healthy young ladies jam fingers down their throats after they eat, or why they skip meals entirely. And why they have unshakeable, unhealthy body images. Sadly, most of the time it's all in their heads...

Except the one time an ex-boyfriend told me he didn't like fat people. "I just can't stand fat people," he said to my face, "they're so disgusting." I'm certain that worthless sack of skin has driven more than one girl into a vicious cycle of self-loathing anorexia.

Or the one time a gutless son of a bitch told my best friend in the whole world that she needed to lose a few pounds to make him feel better about himself. Now there's someone who will be alone for the rest of his life.

Men are NOT the only perpetrators of the unhealthy thought process that leads to bad body-image. Women can be worse.

How about a size zero telling everyone in sight to take a look at her love handles? Or one that whines about skinny girls marginalized because everyone is jealous of their "naturally" slender build? Skeletal and sallow is not natural or normal, I'm sorry to disappoint. And my personal favorite, the girl who brags about eating anything she wants and never gaining a pound, when you know damn well it's not true!

Or how about, from my personal experience, a gaggle of gossipy skating moms whispering about which skater looks like she is spilling out of her leotard, or which one looks like she puffed up over the summer. "She's gonna crack the ice if she falls!"

Regardless of the superficiality of the Today Show experiment--poor supermodels can retreat to their supermodel status and their supermodel life after shedding the fat suit with nothing more than an enhancement of what they already knew as truth, that fat is something to be feared--it makes a valid point that the comments and looks (real or imagined) drive the trend of unhealthy perceptions of one's body image in our society.

We can be all indignant and say, I don't care, I love my body no matter what it looks like--and some people really do believe it, which is fantastic--but for those of us who are by personality a little more dependent on other people, it just can't be absolutely true. Those of us need affirmation from others that we aren't excessive in certain aspects of our lives.

So behind that false front of self-assuredness some of us suffer, we ourselves are perpetuating the notion that fat is bad. And it peppers every aspect of our lives and the lives of those around us.

What is the cure?

Ain't no cure. It helps to do what makes you happy, and to keep an active lifestyle. But the real cure isn't exactly possible, unless any of us had the power to change people's minds and mend each other's insecurities.