Quote Originally Posted by maillotpois View Post
Wow. She is amazing. I wish I could remember the magazine that did the swimsuit or underwear shots of the different athletes - all totally different sports and some of those women didn't look rail thin or even traditionally "fit". But they were all strong.

My body fat ranges in the mid to high 20% range, according to triple site caliper testing, but I am riding better than I suspect I would have in my almost anorexic grad school years.
The original photos are kind of hard to find, but here is a blog post where they included all the images. I believe the original spread was to celebrate the diversity of olympic caliber bodies... (and it made me think that I probably should have considered weight lifting since Tara Nott and I have an awful lot in common).

http://ninamatsumoto.wordpress.com/2...e-for-artists/

As someone who has struggled with body image her whole life, I can relate to the need to see more than just one type of image in the media. But I will say that looking at the body of a super model is not much different than looking at the image of an olympic athlete from a young girl's perspective. Both could be classified as 'unattainable'. I was more influenced by the bodies of the women in my life than I was by the media. Though, I will say that the 1980 olympics made me fall in love with watching sports. Mary Lou Retton kind of changed my life, as corny as that sounds. She made me realize that I should appreciate my body more for what it could do and less for what it looked like. I started wearing shorts and short skirts a lot more after seeing her because I felt like my big, muscular legs looked better when you could see the muscles than they did when covered with pants. Thank heaven for leaving the 70's behind. Flat straight hair and flat straight bodies were not attainable for this teen - bring on the 80's!!