"As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space."

So said the actress Hannah Einbinder:

Hollywood actress Hannah Einbinder blames “fascism” for women wanting to be slim.

“As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space.” pic.twitter.com/0VTlRFqe2e

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 30, 2026

Of course, she's getting trashed on X. She's "trending." That's why I saw it. I don't really know her, but I see she's highly praised for her role in "Hacks," and also that she's the daughter of Laraine Newman.

Anyway, it's cheap and easy to go after an actress who expresses any opinion that seems to require intelligence and background knowledge. I would prefer to isolate what she said and explore the various issues there:

1. There's a broad, casual use of the word "fascism" that's like the way Seinfeld used "Nazi" in "The Soup Nazi." You can argue that the word should be used more precisely, but it doesn't mean the person who's using it broadly is a fool.

2.  Correlation is not causation, and she only said "correlation." She intensified it with "direct" — "There is a direct correlation" — but Einbinder was clever enough to protect herself with the first-rate weasel word "correlation."

3. Did the actual historical fascists idealize female thinness? I don't think so. 

"AJ Jasper, 40, has been struggling with anorexia for about 30 years. Three years ago, at a time when he was a healthy weight, he relapsed after purchasing GLP-1s..."

"... from various apps without ever seeing a doctor. Using multiple drugs at once, he dropped 50 pounds within three to four months. 'The apps make it frighteningly easy. It is like anorexic heroin to my brain chemistry,' said Jasper, a social worker in Chicago. This past winter, he went into triple organ failure — his kidneys, liver and heart were all affected — leaving him too weak to walk or even turn in bed at times...."

From "People with eating disorders are taking GLP-1s and doctors are alarmed/Providers said some patients with anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders are taking GLP-1 drugs" (WaPo).

I think it's great that she looks like this while writing for Vogue.

It's poor form to make fun of somebody for their looks but I do think it says something about the current state of affairs that one can look like this and write for Vogue. https://t.co/BXcxHe1rfg pic.twitter.com/H5zTIpceIz

— Jo (@junker_jo) December 31, 2025

I'm not here to say anything about the political wisdom of Brigitte Bardot. I just want to comment on the photograph of Emma Specter, author of the Vogue opinion piece, "Mourning Brigitte Bardot Doesn’t Mean Absolving Her."

Clicking on the author's name, I see that Specter has lots of writing credentials, including a book called "More Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing and the Lust for 'Enough'" (commission earned). That sounds like the sort of writing that would appeal to Vogue readers and serve their interests well.

So what is there here to make fun of, that she's fat but works for Vogue, where the models are usually quite thin? I'll bet the majority of the readers are fat and that a majority of the unfat readers worry about getting fat. I'll bet the models are obsessed with fighting fat. Fat is a big subject in the Vogue zone of interest, and who's better than Emma Specter at writing about it?

Or is "junker jo" making fun of the fashion? I think the fashion is perfect! Looks like something you'd feel happy and comfortable wearing while female and fat, and the method of putting things together reminds me of those "Look of the Week" fashions we were talking about yesterday. It's really important to show women ways to dress that don't seem to say: First, get thin and maybe you'll be able to wear this.

ADDED: The embedded post originally looked like this:

"If anyone says anything, if anyone has a problem... we'll just comment, Stop commenting on women's bodies! Right?"

"Use it against them. Am I right?... These are just starter ideas."

"I’ve lost 4 stone on Wegovy. Now I look like a weedy nerd."

Good headline... for a piece in the London Times by James Ball.

Excerpt: "Inevitably, someone who hasn’t seen me for a while will remark that I’ve lost weight, but people are much likelier to notice that I’m tall — as if somehow they’d missed that before. If you’re tall and fat, you look like you’re in proportion. Once you’re tall and (relatively) skinny, it becomes obvious you’re all arms and legs. I’m back to what I last weighed as a teenager, and some of that sense of awkward gangliness has returned...."

"A lecture from Pamela Anderson... about fascism and fireflies, that boomed around the uncompromisingly ugly black box..."

"... of a show venue, didn't add to the joy of the occasion. Nor did a finale that looked like a scene from Day of the Living Dead, with sad models drifting around the bleakly-lit space."

I'm perusing "Paris Fashion Week: Pamela Anderson sits front row at joyless Valentino show" (The Telegraph).

This model best exemplifies the mood. Look what fascism is doing to people!

Bones and silk, for that awkwardly bumpy look. 

Anyway, was the venue at the Valentino show "uncompromisingly ugly"? That's a judgment call. I really want to know the facts about what Pam said about "fascism and fireflies." I like alliteration. I envision an alphabet book — illustrated by A.I. — that has "fascism and fireflies" for F.

What can we do for the other letters? A is for anarchy and angel food cake....

But I end up using A.I. to figure out what Pam actually said, and — I'll cut the snark — it was quite eloquent.

"By the time she was a teenager, she had anorexia and worried she would 'never be skinny enough to love,' she said."

"At 17, she weighed 88 pounds, and a doctor told her that if she lost any more weight, she could die. She recalls thinking that death 'sounded quiet, it sounded calm,' she writes. 'I knew that if I died, I could stop trying.' Thinness felt safe, she writes, but it was actually the opposite: 'I was dancing with death and getting date-raped and drinking to excess and popping pills like Tic Tacs and exposing myself to all kinds of delicious abuse just to feel something.' She has been in remission from her eating disorder for many years, she said... She writes about an exploratory visit with a fertility expert... [T]he specialist, who treats other celebrities, brought up weight gain: She could 'get away' with putting on only about 20 pounds during pregnancy, including the weight of the baby. That would mean a smaller child, the doctor added, but if she wanted her kid to be taller later on, there was always human growth hormone."

From "At Least Zosia Mamet Can Laugh About It/In her new book, the actress turns her acid wit to Hollywood’s darker side and her own personal struggles" (NYT).

"Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I’m sure that will poll well…."

Tweeted Ted Cruz, quoted in "Ted Cruz is latest to defend Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad ripped as 'Nazi Propaganda'" (NY Post).

I already blogged Sweeneygate yesterday, and I wouldn't bring it up again — certainly not just because Cruz weighed in — but it resonates with this New York Times "Opinions" podcast I'm in the middle of listening to this morning:

"Thin, White and Right: The Ideal Christian Woman/How skinny became a conservative calling card."

That's a gift link that goes to the NYT page with the audio and a transcript. Keep in mind that there's an idea that there's something right wing/Nazi about beautiful white women. The NYT isn't quite saying that. The columnist Jessica Grose, interviewed at the link, is working on something (presumably) more sophisticated):

"When those on the creative side of fashion could be using their platform to share progressive values, it seems like many are acquiescing rather than pushing back."

"It’s frustrating to see the industry take a step back."

Said Sara Ziff, who leads a "models’ rights" organization. She's quoted in "Why Ultrathin Is In/When it comes to fashion models, the body diversity revolution appears to be at an end" (NYT).

Extreme thinness among models is “not really new — this kind of thing is cyclical,” she said. But this time around, she added, “it seems to echo the current political climate.”

Political???

"She talks about everything. Every pimple she has on her face, every rash she gets on her arm. So why hasn’t she mentioned this?"/"She completely altered her body, and she won’t cop to it."

Complaints of followers of a newly thin Instagrammer, quoted in "They Promoted Body Positivity. Then They Lost Weight. Do plus-size influencers owe their followers an explanation when their bodies change?" (NYT).

"While the runways featured many palettes, there were far fewer body types. Aside from at the Nina Ricci show in Paris, where people of different sizes walked the runway..."

"... models were as skinny as I’ve seen them in the more than 10 years I’ve been documenting fashion weeks." 

Writes Simbarashe Cha, in "Shades of Gray, and Then Some/During Paris Fashion Week, almost every color could be spotted on the streets and the runways" (NYT).

Look at these models. They all look famished and 5 out of 6 seem deeply depressed about it:

That's just part of the photo. I wanted to stress the evident starvation.

The whole photo — at the link — is something that deserves its caption: "Miu Miu’s latest collection included Speedo-style briefs in several colors. Only time will tell if they become as ubiquitous as its miniskirt."

The captions, by the way, are excellent. For example: "Feathers also appeared on the runway at Nina Ricci, where they protruded from this gown like acupuncture needle." And: "Walking with purpose can make a good outfit look even better." And: "Her crouched posture made the tiny bag seem that much bigger"... which I like to think of as small bag the size of a large bag.

Or... minuscule bag the size of a ludicrously capacious bag.

"You see adverts on television with models who are very thin, but the mermaid is like a tribute to the great majority of women..."

"... who are curvy, especially in our country. It would have been very bad if we had represented a woman who was extremely skinny."

Said the headteacher, defending his students, who were asked to make a sea-themed statue for their town. The teacher is quoted in "'Too provocative' mermaid statue causes stir in southern Italy/Art school headteacher hails ‘tribute to the great majority of women who are curvy’ amid social media uproar" (The Guardian).

Go to the link to see the statue, which has huge globular breasts and a giant ass. I'd never even thought of a mermaid's ass before, and now I'm trying to think of how the human ass converges with the fish tail in the mermaid anatomy. 

Is the teacher trying to say that because one alternative — "extremely skinny" — is bad, anything else must be good? That's a logical fallacy.

Anyway, what is a mermaid but a sexual fantasy? They asked students for a mermaid, and they got exactly what they asked for. 

"Before Ozempic, she’d hole up in her hotel on film shoots, juice-cleansing to fit into her costumes. Now, she says..."

"... 'you can eat one and a half meals a day and then you’re kind of hungry at night, but it’s not terrible. You can drink some tea with magnesium and maybe take a Xanax and get to sleep.'..."

I'm reading "Life After Food? A diabetes drug has become an off-label appetite suppressant, changing the definition of being thin and what it takes to get there" (NY Magazine).

"But what makes her an unusual star for the high fashion industry... is the fact that Ms. Kortleve is a U.S. size 8 to 10 — or 'midsize'..."

"... as the middle ground between petite and plus size is increasingly known. 'Straight' size, or under a U.S. size 2, remains, overwhelmingly, the fashion industry norm. Plus-size models, typically those above a U.S. size 12, have become better represented in high fashion. 'Curve' models like Paloma Elsesser, Precious Lee and Ashley Graham have thriving careers. For years, however, Ms. Kortleve has been one of the only midsize models of note.... [T]he ordinary has long been rejected by high fashion, a world that loves to shock through visual extremes. Bony ribs (ideally) or ripples of undulating flesh (occasionally) on a runway or campaign shoot somehow seem preferable to highlighting a body that’s reflective of a more 'boring' middle ground...."

From "The Mean Life of a ‘Midsize’ Model/On TikTok, a midsize movement is forming, but models like Jill Kortleve are rarely cast in glossy brand campaigns or on the catwalks. Why not?" (NYT).

Midsize last size they want to show you, and it's the healthiest, most reasonable place to be. People want excitement, but whatever happened to feeling good?

Reminds me of politics: People don't want to hear from the boring middle or to feel balanced and at ease. They want extremes and extreme emotions — glee and anger. 

Or so it looks on line. Maybe in real life, people are serene and midsize or trying to get to serene/midsize.

"How is it possible that a disease characterized by coughing, emaciation, relentless diarrhea, fever, and the expectoration of phlegm and blood became not only a sign of beauty, but also a fashionable disease?"

Asks Carolyn Day in "Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease," reviewed by Allison Meier in "How Tuberculosis Symptoms Became Ideals of Beauty in the 19th Century/In Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease, Carolyn A. Day investigates how the fatal symptoms of tuberculosis became entwined with feminine ideals in the late 18th and early 19th centuries" (Hypoallergenic).

It helped that the wasting away of tuberculosis sufferers aligned with existing ideas of attractiveness. The thinness, the ghostly pallor that brought out the veins, the rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, and red lips (really signs of a constant low-grade fever), were both the ideals of beauty for a proper lady, and the appearance of a consumptive on their deathbed. If you didn’t have the disease, you could use makeup to get the pale skin and crimson lips, and wear a dress that slumped your posture....

The perception of a medical problem as beautiful is not an isolated quirk of the Victorian age. We do it today. Look around.

I'll just quote an old post of mine, from 2004, my first year of blogging:

"You don’t like that kind of beauty?"/"Good grief, what’s likeable in such snakiness?... In our true Russian understanding concerning a woman’s build..."

"... we keep to a type of our own, which we find much more suitable than modern-day frivolity. We don’t appreciate spindliness, true; we prefer that a woman stand not on long legs, but on sturdy ones, so that she doesn’t get tangled up, but rolls about everywhere like a ball and makes it, where a spindly-legged one will run and trip. We also don’t appreciate snaky thinness, but require that a woman be on the stout side, ample, because, though it’s not so elegant, it points to maternity in them. The brow of our real, pure Russian woman’s breed is more plump, more meaty, but then in that soft brow there’s more gaiety, more welcome. The same for the nose: ours have noses that aren’t hooked, but more like little pips, but this little pip itself, like it or not, is much more affable in family life than a dry, proud nose. But the eyebrows especially, the eyebrows open up the look of the face, and therefore it’s necessary that a woman’s eyebrows not scowl, but be opened out, archlike, for a man finds it more inviting to talk with such a woman, and she makes a different, more welcoming impression on everybody coming to the house. But modern taste, naturally, has abandoned this good type and approves of airy ephemerality in the female sex, only that’s completely useless.”

From "The Sealed Angel," an 1873 story by Nikolai Leskov, collected in "The Enchanted Wanderer." That's a character speaking, not the author's attitude.

That passage amused me, as I was listening to the audiobook and hiking in the mud in the Arb today. The story isn't much about women though, but about the Old Believers and their icons. Yesterday, I read the first story in the collection, "The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."

My reading these stories has nothing to do with the woes unleashed by Russia in the world today. It is a consequence of reading Larry McMurtry's book "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond" (which I mentioned a few days ago, here). That book begins: 

"[I]n an attempt to defend [Billie] Eilish — a sincere attempt, often from other young women — a new narrative is being formed around her body."

"Now, it’s about Eilish’s 'bravery' in having a body atypical for celebrities because she’s seemingly not a size 0. It’s a common refrain anytime a woman in the public eye is seen eating in public, having hips in public, or having rolls in public.... The goal of this kind of noxious positivity is to make clear that not being thin — either intentionally or not — is just as worthy of celebration as thinness has been since basically forever. But this is a false equivalence; we praise thinness because we think it tells us something about someone’s worth, their inherent beauty, their value as a person. The issue isn’t so much celebrating one type of body over another, but rather celebrating a body for its bravery, as if there’s something impressive about existing in the world even though your body doesn’t conform to narrow standards of beauty. Refusing beauty norms, or merely falling outside of them, isn’t that brave; it’s just an inevitability since those standards are increasingly harder to attain. Arguably, every woman in the world is brave in that regard because none of us are meeting every characteristic of perfection, whether we want to or not. Eilish has been vocal in the past about why she wears clothes '800 sizes bigger' than she actually is. 'It kind of gives nobody the opportunity to judge what your body looks like. I don’t want to give anyone the excuse of judging,' she told Vogue Australia in 2019. 'Anything you look at, you judge.'... Calling someone brave for merely existing in the body they have doesn’t take power away from thinness, and it doesn’t create any kind of equilibrium in culture.... The truth about Eilish’s body in those paparazzi photos — the truth about most women and their bodies — is really boring: It’s just a body, and you get the one you get."

 From "That Photo Of Billie Eilish Isn’t Brave. It’s Just Typical. In the pursuit of body positivity, we’ve tipped over into an absurd place — where merely existing in a body larger than a size 0 is considered courageous" Scaachi Koul (Buzzfeed).

First, I'd just like to say, the idea that there are beautiful celebrities who wear size zero is absurd. The chest measurement for size zero is 30 inches! Please point me to any adult with a 30 inch chest. This is not any sort of beauty ideal. But people say "size 0" the way people used to say "thin as a reed." Nobody is thin as a reed, and if they were, it would freak you out. 

Second, I'll say that women's bodies are not boring.

Let's be thankful for shaming the Thanksgiving fat-shamer Sarah Michelle Gellar.

The actress apologized for this, which actually really is pretty awful:

View this post on Instagram

I’m just going to pin these up all over my house as a reminder not to overeat on Thursday #thanksgivingprep

A post shared by Sarah Michelle (@sarahmgellar) on Nov 18, 2018 at 10:04am PST

As Breitbart (linked at the top of Drudge) put it:

The 41-year-old immediately buckled to the social media campaign against her, saying, “It’s come to my attention that some people think I was ‘fat shaming’ with this post. That could not be further from my intentions.”

“I love Thanksgiving and unfortunately my eyes are often bigger than my stomach, and I tend to eat so much I make myself sick. This was a joking reminder to myself not to do that,” she continued. “I’m terribly sorry that people were offended by my attempt at humor. Any one that knows me, knows I would never intentionally ‘shame’ any one on any basis. I am a champion of all people.”

I don't know if I'd use the expression "fat-shaming." But it is the sort of photograph that anorexia enthusiasts call "thinspiration." Ah, yes, here's US Weekly, "Sarah Michelle Gellar ‘Terribly Sorry’ for Offending Instagram Users With Thanksgiving ‘Thinspiration’":

“Buffy, please don’t promote diet culture. Not the kind of message we should be sending,” one [Instagram user] wrote. “Usually love your posts but I’m seriously against ‘thinspiration.’ It’s a core of most eating disorders.”

But, we're told, Gellar also "garnered praise" from some celebrities who said they might "pin the photos at her house, too." In other words, there is demand for thinspiration pictures. Twitter allows the #thinspiration hashtag. Here's what it brings to the top of the page right now:

That's a screenshot. I won't link. And I don't believe that Twitter user, even with that name, is critiquing anorexia.

I should be clear about what I personally find awful about Gellar's photo and caption. She just doesn't look happy. She looks like someone who's trying to look good for somebody else and is getting no pleasure from it herself. And she's wearing "pleasure" clothes. But she's wearing them for somebody else, not herself, apparently. It's sad. The expression on her face reminds me of Bender in "Breakfast Club." That's not joy, though she's at her rock-bottom low weight.

"There’s an argument to be made that subjecting straight men to the same objectification everyone else has long lived with is not only fair play, but in fact social progress..."

"... representing a new paradigm where no one identity group is overly centered. But in the Times 'twink' piece, it’s clear what the dangers involved are, too. Haramis writes of Sivan that there’s 'safety in his slimness,' and says his kind offers 'a new answer to the problem of what makes a man.' The implication is that skinniness comes with sensitivity, and maybe even—given the recent cultural accounting of male misbehavior—that it comes with a lower likelihood of being a creep. This is obviously nonsense: Small stature didn’t keep, say, Aziz Ansari from oafish behavior, according to his accuser. But the thinking echoes the way that physical appearance, when overemphasized, gets linked with moral virtue."

From "What 'The Age of the Twink' Actually Means/Are scrawny guys suddenly 'in'? Or are straight men just, finally, getting openly objectified like women and gay men long have been?" by Spencer Kornhaber (The Atlantic).

We talked about the Times "twink" piece yesterday, here.

The best example I have ever seen of a NYT article with the comments function disabled.

Here's the link to the article: "Welcome to the Age of the Twink," by Nick Haramis.

The pre-censorship of reader commentary is interesting and perhaps cowardly, but it raises the question why publish the article at all? Why the need to protect this article from criticism?

Now, it really turns into a style piece — not (ostensibly) about a manifestation of gay sexuality at all. There's talk of models and the repeated assurance that some of these men are not gay:

But the latest twinks — many of whom are straight — are what you might call “art twinks,” building upon an aesthetic legacy established by Ryan McGinley’s turn-of-the-millennium photographs of the sloppily skinny, or last decade’s leather-pant-clad Saint Laurent models chosen by the designer Hedi Slimane. And yet they are more culturally mainstream: a growing cohort of famous (and famously small) boys who stand in opposition to the lumbering, abusive oafs who have been dominating this year’s headlines.

Lumbering, abusive oafs... Apparently, according to "Notes on the Culture" — it's the "age of the twink" because we loathe so much of what comes in the form of a man. We're told of a popular music performer whose "whole mien [was] charged with sex" but whom we could nevertheless appreciate because of the "safety in his slimness."

Women, we're told, are "us[ing] their voices to undo [the] legacy of toxic masculinity," and this is changing the culture: "These twinks, after all, aren’t just enviably lean boys or the latest unrealistic gay fantasy, but a new answer to the problem of what makes a man."

Who is Nick Haramis, by the way? There's no biographical note at the page or clickable link on his name. I had to look him up on Wikipedia. He's Senior Features Editor, T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Did he made the decision to publish this in this form and to protect himself from comments?! The Wikipedia article is short, but it contains the line: "Haramis is also a regular on the downtown New York nightlife scene." I could also do a Google image search on him to see if he's a lumbering oaf or a man with a mien of safety and slimness.