Is Scrawn The New Brawn?

Too fat for Paris
http://www.theage.com.au/news/fashion/too-fat-for-paris/2008/06/05/1212259007491.html
(Picture taken from stated website)

I came across an unsettling article in The Age today. I mean I live in a culture which espouses healthy values, but do we really value health? In our endless pursuit of beauty, many have fallen into the quagmire of eating disorders (as I'm writing this, I'm tucking into a lunch of mixed stir-fried vegetables, Tofu and ultra lean pork. Is something missing or what?). Girlfriends who are already serial head-turners embark on weight loss projects, cutting carbs, then meat, then my self esteem as I start to wonder what I am if they consider themselves 'fat'.

Now the epidemiology of this pathological body image is set for a tectonic shift to include the other half of our species. Let me demonstrate what I mean. The model above is 6'2" (1.88m) and weighs 76kg, giving a BMI of 21, which is right smack in the middle of the healthy BMI range. But BMIs can only tell you so much. Your eyes, on the other hand, are way better telling you if someone needs to fast. Albeit glazed to shield my retina from the abs-ilicious specimen, they tell me he is not, by any stretch of imagination, fat. Yet he is "not skinny enough for the Parisian scene - where lean is the new mean.". Yes yes, we're no longer hunter-gatherers so muscles have become obsolete. But I'm a firm believer that they still have a place, especially around the chest and abdominal areas of a male body. Call me traditional, but perhaps its pretty awesome for a girl to have a guy put his sculpted arms around her, you know, adds to the sense of security and all that? I'd rather have that anytime than a guy whose shoulder you can't lean on because it cuts. What do you think?