Especially the folks at Knopf Delacorte Dell?

FUCK YOU. Seriously. FUCK YOU.

And especially a HUGE FUCK YOU to both Noreen Marchisi and Kathy Dunn, two women who oughta know the fuck better. I don't know any woman who, no matter her size, hasn't been impacted by arbitrary standards of beauty, set by narrow-minded, fascist ignorants. So that the following is being lead by two women just adds insult to injury.

There is not a woman of my generation alive who didn't read the Sweet Valley High series of books and NOT recall the stigma of NOT being a "perfect size six," which, you might recall, was the size of the Wakefield twins, the main characters of the series. My boyfriend just took an informal poll at his office and EVERY woman he spoke to remembers and can recount that little fact as there wasn't a SVH book that didn't include that little factoid.

And now Random House is re-releasing the series, with some modern updates to "appeal to today's reader."

Which apparently includes LOWERING what constitutes a "perfect" size from the aforementioned six to a SIZE FOUR.

Look, I don't blame Sweet Valley High for a lifetime of body image issues, but subtle influences like reading "perfect size six" in book after book after book of a series I read in my formative years was just one more contributing factor. And to think that the people who publish these books would reissue the series with such damaging language angers me to no end. I don't agree with how it was used then, but culturally speaking, the idea of assigning perfection to a clothing size was certainly more pervasive in the 80s.

We're supposed to have evolved and communicated the dangers of perpetuating such ideas! We're supposed to care more for our girls! Hell, we're supposed to care more about our society in general that we stop allowing a select few to do such things.

I take responsibility for the fact that I'm an educated, knowledgeable person who has a choice whether or not to continue to be victimized by these sorts of people. I don't say this because a book publisher has decided to assign a value to a clothing size and now I'm feeling bad about being a size 10. But I'm a grown woman and I know better and I've fought long and hard to overcome "lessons" I learned as a young girl that taught me to hate my body and be critical of its shape at all times.

But it's the young girls who are going to read these books and think they don't measure up because the tag on their skirt doesn't read "4." That's what I'm mad about.

You should be too.

Posted by Erin at 02:29 PM | filed under: Random Stupidity