What's so wrong with women being soft?

Kai Hibbard lost the weight. 118 pounds, in fact. And America watched her do it. As a contestant on Season 3 of The Biggest Loser, Hibbard had an experience she is now saying wasn't all that pleasant. Or healthy.

(insert sarcasm here) I'm shocked.

A television show brings on the heaviest people they can find and pushes them through extreme workouts and diets and dehydration to promote the idea that, "You, too, can lose 12 pounds per week!" with a verbally-abusive trainer and a food Nazi. All this can be yours if you just buy their books or their diets or their advice. And yes, they do accept Visa and Mastercard.

And this is unhealthy?
(insert additional sarcasm here) Say it isn't so.

I don't know if she's telling the truth that this is all about finally being honest and not making money, that she wants to be a proud military wife and stand beside her active-duty husband and not feel like a coward, that it's about setting right some wrongs.

I don't know if it's true. But I do know reality television sucks.


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I'm stepping on my soapbox. You've been forewarned.

I'm glad Kia was able to lose the weight, along with the other contestants. What I've always hated about this entire show, this whole culture, is the obsession with quick fixes and size. Health is only important if it leads you down the path of fast weight loss and the sculpted male-biceps of the First Lady.

Skinny is healthy, even though it's not. Bony is beautiful, even though it's not. Grown women starving themselves to look like 12-year-old girls and men salivating over their emaciated forms is natural, even though it really isn't.

You ever wonder how it is that being underweight is a sign of supposed health, while also being a symptom of fatal disease?

Today, I'm wearing my "V" shirt. It's the same one in my profile picture and a shirt I've worn so much it deserved a title. I wear it because it's soft. So very soft. I found it at Target. The design didn't get my attention. But then I reached out and touched it. And yes, I was hooked.

Wearing this shirt makes me happy. Period. It's gentle. Whispering. Almost dewy. It isn't all that feminine. But I love it because it feels feminine. Or at least what use to be thought of as feminine. The softness. The curves. The...I'm going to use this word...luscious form of the female body.

Women use to be celebrated for their roundness. Now it's sucked out, starved out, or cut off. Women were the weaker sex because we were the softer one. But that's no longer acceptable. What I see are bones. Lots of bones. And the more they stick out the hotter the women apparently are.

These days, the round bodies of painter Gustav Klimt would be put on a treadmill and told to cover up until their BMI dropped.

What's so wrong with women being soft? When did that become such a hostile concept? Fit is good. Health is good. I'm for both in a big, big way. But that's not, painfully obviously not, the goal. These days, women fluctuate between being painfully thin to overly sculpted. We've redefined the word "healthy" as "ripped" and everything else is sub par or primed for mockery.

I still remember President Obama even commenting in February 2009 during his pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Laur how Jessica Simpson was "in a weight battle apparently." How dare gaunt Daisy Duke eat. I actually thought she looked good with her curves back.

I thought she looked unique, soft. I thought she looked feminine. And we simply can't have that.