Yeah, I'm really sick of having to say this to all the women I know too. I'm pretty sure that when you tell women that they're not
fat, they still think you're
lying or just trying to be nice on some level. It seems to be a
lose-lose situation, unless you're
Suzanne Somers,
Weight Watchers, or some women's magazine. The media's portrayal of the "
ideal" woman is so
omnipresent and so
simple that it becomes more powerful than any other
individual can be, and there seems like there's no way to break through to women who are overly obsessed with their
image.
But I think I've stumbled on the answer. Certain women feel bad when they think of themselves as fat... but they get temporary relief when someone tells them that they look fine. I propose that we start telling women, right to their face, that they're fat. Not just sometimes, and not just the overly obsessed ones, all women, all the time. Sure, they'll feel real bad at first, but eventually it'll hurt so much that they'll learn to deal with it. They'll stop caring. Humans (just like all life-forms) are designed to adapt to their environments: if you give them two opposing truths ( "you should look like this" vs "you look beautiful the way you are"), they won't know which one is true, and which one they should integrate into their lifestyle and worldview, so they'll unhealthfully oscillate back and forth between the two extremes. If you give them a definite truth ("food and shelter are necessary", "people who commit crimes go to jail", "you are fat and there's nothing you can do about it"), they'll accept it and not try to fight it until they're presented with a different point of view ("I can commit crime and not get caught").
So since we obviously can't exert any influence over the media, the only point of view for us to eliminate is that women aren't fat. We can even make up some scientific studies demonstrating that women are genetically predisposed to being fat. And we won't say that being fat is bad -- just that every woman weighs more than the average. And they'll remove the badness they project onto it all by themselves.
And if you're opposed to this idea, it's just because you know that if women start being happy with their image, they won't spend so much time and effort trying to make themselves look like supermodels, and you won't have as much eyecandy. You chauvinistic, sexist swine.