There's a Kellogg's Special K ad in many women's magazines this month.

Nothing new in that.

But, instead of the usual frisky model scarfing down flakes while pumping iron and the baby, this particular ad shows a bony, bikinied body.

"If this is beauty, there's something wrong with the eye of the beholder." reads the copy, which goes on to make the pitch that "a healthy body weight, should be beautiful inn anyone's eyes" and that the cereal will help you healthfully lose weight.

"Talk about mixed messages, especially considering the much-more-powerful signals sent out on the surrounding pages. In too many magazines, women read that they can never be young enough, busty enough, and most important, thin enough.

Perhaps it's the pose, the lighting, the makeup, but the Special K model looks, aside her incongruously ample breasts (ain't it always so?), hideous. Not that she's skinnier than the current crop of dress hangers in the February File, to take just one example.

But because the picture isn't flattering and she isn't draped in $1 million worth of Mizrahu, she looks like, well, let's just say "prisoner of war" comes to mind.

Feminists have long complained about waif models, but their protests are usually ignored, both by the fashion industry and the general media.

The female stars of Friends all wear Size 4. The only chubby chicks you see on TV, except for Rosie O'Donnell, are losers on Riki Lake and Jerry Springer.

Men are just starting to feel the same pressure. With men's health and fashion magazines proliferating, Calvin Klein producing more buff male ads, male movie stars pumping and liposucking and good looks becoming career requirements in the toughened-up job market, men are being subjected to more and more impossible physical ideas.

So it's no wonder the January/February issue of Psychology Today reports some people at war with their bodies are willing to die younger, if they can leave a thinner corpse.

The "1997 Body Surgery" indicates that "15 per cent of women and 11 per cent of men say they would sacrifice more than five years if their lives for the weight they want".

"Twenty-four per cent of women and 7 per cent of men say they would give up more than three years."

Staying slim had become such a issue for women that some of them are passing up on parenting so as not to ruin their figures.

"Pregnancy," writes David M. Garner in the 16-page article: "is increasingly being seen not as a normal body function but as an encumbrance to body image."

And from where do these ideas come?

It's no longer possible to deny the fact that images of models in the media have a terrible effect on how women see themselves." Writes Garner. "Women who have eating disorders are most influenced by fashion models."

Tracing the survey results over the years, Psychology Today conducted similar surveys in 1972 and 1985, it quickly becomes clear that contradictions between the culture's thinning body ideals and the fattening of fast-food menus are making us very unhappy, indeed.

For example, "only" 49 per cent of women responded in 1972 hated their thighs. Today the percentage has shot to 61.

Twenty five years ago, 36 per cent of men were dissatisfied with their abdomens. Today, 63 percent think their pots have gone to pot.

The good news? Satisfying sex helps improve body image, no matter how much bounce you have to the ounce. Notes Garner, "Good sexual experiences breed high levels of body satisfaction.

Only trouble is, if fat is considered so freaky, how do you go about getting those "good sexual experiences"?

The magazines, while offering some solutions to the body image problem, doesn't say.

Related Lesson

Kellogg Special K Ads