Rebecca from Bbeebies is far too thin, no?

[babyfedleaning]

I have no idea if she is intentionally that skinny or whether it's natural (i suspect not) but to me she just looks emaciated and it bothers me that my children will think that she is a normal shape for a grown woman. She looks pale and tired and her head looks disproportionately large. Not a great role model.

I don't know. It's rather hard (and unfair) to gauge weight/health based just on their appearance on a tv screen. The red dress she's wearing in the the current links is also very slimming and completely different to what she normally wears on Lets Play.

She's pretty young and looks like someone who's naturally slim, and looks after herself. She reminds me of a friend who's been vegan since she was about 18 and is incredibly healthy, never ever catches colds and glows with health.

I find it interesting that, having noticed she seems thinner, pale, and tired, your first thought is not to be concerned lest she be ill, but rather the long term effects on your children if she has overdieted.

We dont watch CBeebies anymore, so I had to google her. The gallery on her website shows her to be slim, but bot boney in the shocking way of anorexics. She has thighs, and calves and hips which are slim but rounded. Her knees and wrists and hands dont look as if she starves herself. She is small enough that any illness could show drastically, but that doesnt mean she her usual weight is unhealthy.

OP what magazine read by an 8yo talks about people being 'lovely and thin'? It's definitely not a phase you here on television, it's all 'real women' (boak!) and 'curves'.

She got it from home and it's easily done!

I have a 2yo and an 4mo. Just a few weeks ago I was absent mindedly prodding myself in the stomach while looking in the mirror, complaining to DH about the skin being wobbly. 2yo DD was listening the whole time and started copying me

Really made me buck up my ideas and think about the things I say in front of her.

FFS! Her BMI, according to the stats on that card, is 18 so she is very slightly underweight. It's likely that the card is a load of bollox anyhow!

I do mean her appearance in the current links, rather than how she appears in Let's Play and granted, it hadn't entered my mind she might be ill and for that I apologise. It would account for the pale tired appearance she has had recently.

I think she looks normal and lovely. Not too skinny whatsoever. She looks fairly short and is completely in proportion. I think we're slowly becoming more and more used to the notion of overweight people being the norm, it's scary.

BMI is bollocks really. It doesn't frame size into account at all. SHe has a small frame, narrow shoulders etc. If her frame was bigger she would weigh a bit more but she would still have the same amount of fat covering her bones I guess.

I haven't seen the recent links but in all the stuff I've googled she just looks like I did when I was younger. Small frame, probably eats loads and that's just the way she's built.

Of course, you also have to consider now that "overweight is the new normal", which may be skewing people's impressions of her. If your family and friends all happen to be overweight then someone who is actually of a normal weight seems too thin to them. I used to get sick of 2 of my (quite visibly overweight) colleagues very rudely telling me that I was too thin and needed to eat more. At the time I was too young and unconfident not to answer them back but I would inwardly think "yeah, right, like I'm going to listen to you two! Anyway, I can't possibly eat any more than I do and don't deny myself anything including cream cakes etc"

I do think a lot of overweight people have forgotten what "average weight" looks like.

One thing I've been musing on - when there are threads like this, naturally slim women will often state that they eat normally and are naturally that size. However, if an overweight woman were to state that she ate normally, she'd be met with derision and disbelief, and told that it's simple, calories in vs calories out, or to eat less and move more.

Not to mention, that being underweight and scrawny is a normal was for a person to develop. You shouldnt try to be that way, but you can develop that way. 4 of the 5 of my siblings and I were built that way as teens. The other one was always 'husky' as clothes for larger boys were called in those days.

He still is, proportionally, the same as he ever was. Husky.
The other 3, also men, are pretty much as scrawny as they ever were, and one round of flu can have them looking gaunt and ready for the grim reaper, for longer than they were ill.

I have swapped from scrawny to husky womans sizes. For reasons ranging from pregnancies to stress to hormonal BC to working in resteraunts.

To be fair on OP, the pictures coming up on google and her website are older pictures. On the recent links and newer series of let's play, she has lost weight.

id be concerned about your neice more than about the TV presenter. Does she have women in her life that are dieting/concerned with weight?

Ok, Slaggy, to me eating normally is going to a restaurant with 3 courses on offer. I'll have a starter and a main and eat it all. I'll have a dessert if I've got room and only if I have. I dont want to end up feeling sick. But if I feel I have room for it, I have it, I don't think "oh I better hadnt - that's naughty!" Like people who watch their weight/diet do. I have never been on a diet in my life and don't weigh myself. Maybe a couple of times a year out of interest.

My observation of people who are overweight who complain that they don't understand why they are is that they will have a starter, a main, then automatically have a dessert, without stopping to think whether they might feel overstuffed if they eat it.

I can't eat 3 courses. 2 at a push then I have to go lie down and would probably be full for the rest of the day if it was lunchtime.

Today I have consumed :

2 coffees with milk and sugar
1 hot cross buss
1 chocolate biscuit
1 chicken sandwich on brown seeded bread
A small smoothie
A bowl of pasta bake which I made with mushrooms and pepper. It supposedly has bacon in the sauce but I have yet to find it

Normal enough ?

Oh and a packet of crisps.

It makes me very uncomfortable that so many Mumsnetters are determined to insist that no slim presenters/actresses/celebrities are suffering from eating disorders.

Overweight people's problems with food are there on show and no one can deny them.

But there is this bizarre resistance to admitting that eating disorders are rife in film and television because the body size deemed acceptable by the industry is too low for most people to achieve.

5ft5" and under 8 stone is low! surely?

AHEM

I guess you'd all say Sarah Jane Honeywell looks perfectly healthy too.

whether it's natural (i suspect not)

In what way would it be 'unnatural'?

I'm not saying she can't possibly.

I just think it isn't ok to speculate on a woman's mental health based from her weight/appearance and nothing else.

She might have an eating disorder.
She might be stressed.
She might have a physical illness.
She might be 100% healthy.

But we have no way of knowing from just looking at her and such speculation is at best unkind.

I personally found it very hurtful for people to comment that I must have "something wrong" with me.

I wonder how she would feel if she read this ?

I've only eaten crackers and drank 7up today because I was up most of the night with a bad stomach!

Yesterday I ate
A bowl of shreddies
a wholemeal ham and watercress sandwich
a blueberry muffin
A bowl of pasta with chicken and vegetables in a tomato sauce
A satsuma

2/3 cups of tea
Peppermint tea
5/6 glasses of water

I can't eat 3 courses either. I never eat until I am so full that I feel ill, I hate that feeling and think it's unnecessary.

Not nice to try and shame people because they are slim, babyfedleaning!

Would you start a post saying how Dawn French is getting too fat and how it is affecting how the young children view body images?

I doubt whether you would somehow.

5ft5" and under 8 stone is low! surely?

No, it's not. I'm 5ft 4 and 7stone8, that is normal for me! The heaviest I have ever been is 9stone 4, that was the day I gave birth to DS1!

I absolutely never eat 3 courses. I can't bear feeling full because I am emetophobic and that feeling of a full stomach sends me slightly panic stricken.

Today I have eaten a toasted cinnamon and raisin bagel with butter, two cups of tea with milk and one coffee with milk and 1 sugar.

I am 3 stone overweight and size 16 .

So what does any of this prove? Nothing whatsoever.

How can we talk about this issue then?

How can we discuss the very scary and serious illnesses that eating disorders are?