Dear Monica Grenfell STFU

This is the comment I left there:

I found this post via Kate Harding’s blog. You horrible woman should be ashamed of yourself for your thinly veiled attack on this lovely young lady.

She is doing a wonderful thing by not being a pretentious wench who is obsessed with body image and making other young women of her age aware you don’t need to be a toothpick to attractive, vibrant and gorgeous. Kudo’s to her for making it this far.

You have no shame attacking a 17 year old girl who has more moxy th

an you ever will, you wench.
Hurrah for Miss Surrey 08!

The Daily Mail article w/comments thread

The article text after the cut.

A role model for ordinary women? No, Miss England finalist is fat, lazy and a poster girl for ill health

By MONICA GRENFELL – More by this author » Last updated at 08:16am on 3rd April 2008

Chloe Marshall has caused a storm by becoming the first size 16 beauty queen to reach the finals of the Miss England contest. Feted and fawned over for her courage in daring to break the mould, Chloe boasts she wants to be an “ambassador for curves”.

Who on earth does she think she’s kidding? What she’s demonstrating isn’t bravery but a shocking lack of self-control.

Instead of flaunting her figure, Chloe ought to own up to the truth. She is fat and she got that way by over-eating.

I don’t take any pleasure in attacking Chloe – after all she’s only 17. But I think she has been very badly advised in her bid to champion the cause of bigger girls.

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Bad role model: Chloe’s latest photo shoot shows us that it’s now not only acceptable but even fashionable to be overweight

But as a dietician I am so worried about the damage her well-oiled publicity machine is doing that I think it’s vital to speak out.

In my view, Chloe is a terrible role model.

I hope she doesn’t win the Miss England title.

It would send an appalling – and very dangerous – message to other young women that it’s OK to be fat.

Chloe is a stark reminder that obesity is now virtually normal in our society – and we should all be hanging our heads in shame.

She is an ambassador not for the beautiful larger lady as she’d have us believe but a poster girl for diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, cancers and all the other devastating and potentially fatal health problems that are caused or exacerbated by obesity.

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Sitting pretty: Chloe claims to do a lot exercise but her BMI of 26.03 instead of the optimum of 20 marks her out as being undeniably overweight

As a judge on last year’s Miss England contest, I was hugely impressed, not just by the beauty but by the skills dedication and determination of the contestants.

For example, most had raised huge sums of money for their favourite charities. They shone out as young women to be admired.

But can the same really be said of Chloe?

At 5ft 10in, Chloe should have a body mass index, or BMI, (indicating her levels of fat) of 20. Hers is 26.03.

BMI is an assessment generally used by GPs and health experts to determine if a person is underweight, overweight or within a healthy weight range.

Chloe’s BMI puts her as undeniably overweight.

Our doctors’ surgeries are full of people whose problems are caused by their weight.

Devastating conditions – from Type 2 diabetes to heart problems and many cancers – are caused or exacerbated by obesity.

And if Chloe is so overweight at barely 17, one shudders to imagine just how fat she will be a few years down the line.

The Government can do all it wants to urge us to eat more healthily but – as Chloe demonstrates – it’s now not simply acceptable but fashionable to be bigger.

She talks about the “skinny minnies” she’ll be competing against. “All I wanted to do by entering this pageant was to send a message out to young girls that it is fine NOT to be a size zero.”

Well, she’s talking total rubbish.

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Big issue: Chloe criticised her ‘skinny’ Miss England rivals in Femail last week

When I was a Miss England judge I was struck by how elegant, charming and yes, fit, the girls were. None of them was underweight.

It’s a total fallacy that young girls are being pressured into near-starving themselves into being too thin.

Take a look around you and you will see that the total reverse is true.

Teenage girls aren’t in danger of falling victim to an epidemic of anorexia – but of obesity.

The much-vaunted size zero of catwalk models is actually a UK size four. How many girls do you know that size?

The number of women in this country who are seriously underweight is minute around one in 70.

Levels of bulimia are actually falling. Instead our high streets are packed with young girls – just like Chloe – with “muffin tops” of fat spilling over their jeans.

Larger women may take comfort from the fact that a young girl who is quite self-evidently fat has won a place in Miss England, and Chloe argued last week that she has a healthy diet and exercises regularly.

“I refuse to starve myself to turn my body into something it was never meant to be,” she said.

I don’t doubt she is telling truth. But yet again she is exposing another myth – that you need to starve yourself to be a healthy weight, and that only junk food makes you fat.

Getting fat by eating good food is perfectly possible – if you eat too much of it.

Chloe claims she “crept up” to a size 16 after dieting to a size 12 on top and 14 on bottom. She’s kidding herself.

Her weight didn’t “creep on” magically – she ate too much food.

Every excess 1lb of weight she’s carrying – and I reckon she is at least a stone overweight – equates to five meals she didn’t need.

If Chloe chooses to be curvy, that’s fine. It is, after all, her personal choice.

But it’s time she stopped telling the rest of us that being fat is great and that the only way to be a healthy weight is by starving yourself.

It’s dangerous nonsense.