Body dysmorphia – pro and con – in the Penny Press!

My favorite ironic, unintentional, sexist contrast of the month comes from the latest issue of GQ: quite by the random chance of advertising space, we get these two pictures side-by-side. On the one side, there’s a young woman who’s dementedly devoted to re-shaping her body into a living simulacrum of a Barbie doll, a self-mutilation GQ‘s editors clearly want their readers to find revolting:

And on the other side, an ad for a men’s clothing line featuring a young model who’s anatomically an adult male but who weighs 85 pounds and subsists entirely on tobacco, having eschewed both solid food and water since childhood:

The creators of that ad – and by extension those same GQ editors – are hoping for the exact opposite reaction here, even though both pictures are equally revolting. There’s a moral there somewhere – perhaps in plain view?