This is what our new equalities minister has been getting up to...

[ISNT]

just head-desk

and GAH!

Gah indeed.

FGS. Does our equalities minister have anything to say about which body all men should aspire to?

I propose this one:

glazes over

Tit job for me then. I MUST LOOK LIKE THE WOMAN FROM THE TELLY.

I think she's trying to do something good. i.e. point out that size 14 without too much weight round the tummy is a perfectly healthy and fine shape to have.

She just isn't, er, actually doing it.

Yes, I would like all men to have the body of Rob Lowe.

Let the government order it!

government of all the talents my arse

FFS

still stuck on herbeatitudes link

erm what were we talking about? brad for king or something?

Agree with Elephants -- she's trying to make a sensible point about body types and health/fitness, but Hasn't Thought It Through.

What baffles me is why the BBC reports this as serious news and ignores all the other real and pressing problems women have.

Don't get me started!

Did anyone else hear Jeremy Whine earlier talking about the poor men who suffer so from financial difficulties. It was truly terrifying all the blokes ringing in and basically saying yeah I understand why this man killed his wife and children, I might do the same myself.

No mention of maybe the wife/children didn't actually want to be killed? Nor of perhaps we shouldn't be spending our time sympathising with mass murderers? Or of perhaps the victims suffered even more than the killer - just a thought.

OMG, really?

Yes really, I felt like I'd accidentally changed channels to Killer Sympathy FM. It was all men (because only men have financial problems it seems, despite the pay gap and all), all with stories about how money problems made them depressed, many of them saying they could understand exactly why the guy did it. Several of them also sounding like they were considering their options (presumably WRT killing their nearest and dearest) right now.

It was completely unsettling and bizarre.

I was reading about the family - the wife ran a nursery so it's not like she was sitting around not earning anything FGS.

So often with these cases it turns out that the bloke had actually had a history of abusing his family before. You don't just go from being normal to looking on your family as objects to dispose of as ou will.

And isn't it true that women have been hit hardest, considering women are the ones who have primary responsibility for children's well-being and often can't work FT because of the children?

From Lynne Featherstone's blog:

'Body Confidence 2
Oh for goodness' sake! Christina Hendricks is a fine looking woman and it is great to see a curvy woman rather than an ultra thin one. But that was hardly the point of the article in the Sunday Times! However the follow-on newspaper articles in other publications seem to focus only on Ms Hendricks.

The last thing we need is to move from one impossible idealised and unobtainable image of the super skinny kind to another impossible and unobtainable image of the curvy kind!'
www.lynnefeatherstone.org/2010/07/body-confidence-2.htm

The link in the OP is a (mis)interpretation of what Featherstone actually says. Come on, you should all know this - it's journalism 101!

God Elephants I actually phoned in to the JV show to make the point that women get into debt, get stressed, get depressed etc., but they're not killing their husbands and children at the rate of 2 a week and perhaps we ought to be looking at why the man considered he had the right to take the life of his wife and kids because he was stressed, rather than assuming that it's an understandable thing for him to do.

Needless to say, I wasn't called back and no-one else who made that point was allowed on.

Yes earwicga, but she should also know better.

2 a week.

Don't understand why she thinks it is in her remit to comment on women's bodies at all

Saying one type of body is better than another (curvy better than thin) in itself is not something someone concerned about equality should be doing

Sorry for ignorance - who is she? What has she done and where has she come from?

Good for you HerBea - my dad was egging me on to phone in but I told him they didn't deserve me . Really it's a horrible show, I was horrified (but not surprised) that the responses they featured were just representing that one single viewpoint. I just wondered whether that's all that people on the phones wanted to say - now I know better at least.

The more I hear and read, the more obvious it seems that a LOT of people think that killing your wife is barely a crime, and that even if it is it's the wife's fault/the fault of circumstances - anyone but the killer's fault.

This is interesting
Info from the US so some parts are less relevant here (WRT guns etc), but it quotes a study showing that the biggest risk factor for familicides is a history of domestic violence from the killer. 70% of the people who kill their families have (I presume this is just the number on record) a history of beating up their family. Surprise surprise eh.