The Hate Can Weight.

Now I will not pretend to be a Lady Gaga superfan, or one of her "little monsters", but I have to get this off my chest... Leave Gaga alone.

The tabloids have erupted in a storm of Gaga slandering. And why, you ask? Well, the madwoman has gained a few pounds. What a disgusting pig.

It makes me feel sick to read some of the truly awful articles published about a the "decidedly meatier" singer.  Led, of course, by The Daily Mail's addictive gossip website the press have been ripping Lady Gaga to shreds, blaming her weight gain on her drug dependence (huh?) and suggesting she has piled on a whopping 30 lbs.

The aptly nicknamed Daily Fail (christened by the goddesses at The Vagenda) have published a series of appalling articles. They suggest she "hides fuller figure under an oversized coat" and, most shockingly of all, that "despite her recent weight gain, Lady Gaga was polite to fans." And this is journalism?! Give. Me. A. Break.

Lady Gaga has responded by posting pictures of herself in her underwear, standing up to these bullies as only she knows how, and has bravely got on with it, despite this horrible abuse.

I'm not suggesting that Gaga does not expose herself to such criticism. She is a worldwide celebrity and is of course going to be subject to tabloid gossip, but what really gets me about this article is how it portrays "fat" as a terrible thing, something to be ashamed of, something that actually turns you into a nasty person.

This is the problem with modern media. Articles about severely anorexic girls are published alongside this vitriol, yet not a peep is uttered about how these "fattist" attitudes affect young women and men. Yes, Lady Gaga may have gained a few pounds but she has no obligation to be skinny, if she is happy and healthy then so be it- it is none of our business and I don't doubt for one second that the vile "journalist" who sat behind their desk typing up these ludicrous taunts will have been a good few pounds heavier than Lady Gaga. Not that it matters, of course.

The fact of the matter is that our beauty ideals are narrowing even further. The recent airbrushed images of Karlie Kloss, where her skeletal ribs have been smoothed over, shows that we are being fed a false image of perfection. Her emaciated body has been concealed, suggesting that you can be so very tiny but still be "healthy", with no savagely protruding bones. It is truly shocking.

The final straw in the whole Lady Gaga debacle is that Lady Gaga is a recovered bulimic. Everyone knows it, she has talked about the harrowing effects of this eating disorder, yet still the tabloids decide to rip into her for gaining a few pounds? If they had even an inkling of decency, these articles would not have been published, but still, they were and the subsequent media storm has drawn even more traffic to the trashy Daily Mail website. Bulimia is a truly horrible illness, a slippery slope that it is devastatingly hard to break away from. When you begin to purge, it is extremely difficult to stop, and before you know it you are sneaking into bathrooms after dinner, tears streaming down your face, feeling like there is no alternative.

I completely support Lady Gaga on this, and I think she still looks great. I could not care less about her gaining a few pounds, and nobody else has any right to attack her for this. Get a grip, there are far more important things than being thin.

And, on that note, i'm going to go lust over the Nutella pizza i'll be indulging in at Ping this evening. Because I can. Take that Mail Online writers, feel free to comment on my meatier frame if it makes you feel THAT much better about yourselves.

Six Weeks To 'Are You Kidding Me?'

Brekkie? I'll just have my porridge, thanks.

Let us not lie, we are all obsessed with our bodies. Too fat, too thin, whatever, we are a bunch of body obsessors and it's getting cray-zay.

Alas, it is not our fault! We are a nation fixated, nigh on infatuated, with being slim. We are conditioned to view ourselves as inadequate with every front page declaring a size 10 singer curvy or, worse, fat. "Why don't you look like Miranda Kerr you lazy brute? It's probably all those pizzas, have a salad instead, without the dressing. Stop enjoying yourself: BE THIN."

Perhaps the media are a little slyer than that, but increasingly they are starting to sound just like the anorexic minx that plagues every sufferer's mind. "You could be skinnier than all your friends... Just skip breakfast and get your energy from espresso. It's easy!". These are genuinely the principles of a diet that has seen a huge amount of coverage this summer: the totally tragic "SIX WEEKS TO OMG!"

It is the first diet to promote skinniness rather than health, a skinniness that is unattainable if it is not your natural build. It is promoting excessive exercise, skipping breakfast, dipping into a freezing bath to shock your body into fat burning. It is, quite frankly, sickening and I can't believe that it is receiving so much attention, as well as topping the best sellers lists, confirming what I had feared- we are no longer a nation obsessed with being thin, we are now a nation obsessed with being skinny. Great.

You can argue, of course, and please do let me know your thoughts, but it feels like our perception of what is healthy, and what is beautiful, is becoming even more skewed and, ultimately, detrimental. "SIX WEEKS TO OMG" first hit the shelves just as the beautifully slender Kate Upton was being labelled "fat". A size eight, guys, a SIZE EIGHT.

No, Grazia , she is not curvy, no, Daily Mail, she is not voluptuous, SHE IS TINY. She looks like all women should wish they did and it scares me that we no longer want to look like a goddess with boobs, a bum and a flat stomach and instead want to mirror catwalk models, coveting their thigh-gaps, protruding clavicles and xylophone ribs.

It is horrifying and I cannot for the life of me see what can be done to change this. It scares me, what actually needs to happen to make us wake up and realise that skinniness is not always attainable and for the masses is not healthy?

How on earth are all the boys and girls suffering from eating disorders supposed to beat them? It's an uphill struggle and it is becoming even harder these days. Something desperately needs to change.

The skinny obsession is everywhere now. On the way to the hospital last month, I held my head in my hands, desperately dreading my imminent weigh-in. I then looked up as my Bakerloo line train pulled into a station, and was greeted by a gigantic poster for "SIX WEEKS TO OMG" Helpful, TFL, thanks.

Part of me feels, though, that it is too late for things to change.

Please let me know your thoughts.

PS

Apologies that this post is a bit out of date... I found it on my iPad, which I have only just bothered to charge today for the first time since Barcelona!

PPS

If you really insist on shaping up try this approach. Much healthier!