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The Why Factor: Thin

Why Thin

27/05/2016 GMT

Thin

BBC World Service - The Why Factor, Thin

Mike Williams asks why so many people want to be thin in a world grappling with obesity.

Mike Williams asks why so many people want to be thin in a world grappling with obesity. Are we hard-wired to like a certain body shape or is “thin” just a passing fashion?

For thousands of years, a thin body was a sign of poverty or disease. But there is now a growing, global obsession with being thin.  And this at a time when many populations around the world are, paradoxically, suffering epidemics of obesity. Mike Williams finds out why, as he speaks to former French model Victoire Macon Dauxerre, Tony Glenville from the London College of Fashion, Anne Becker from Harvard Medical School, Professor John Speakman from University of Aberdeen and Etta Edim from Nigeria’s Efik tribe.


Image: A vendor arranges stick-thin mannequins in a store in China (Credit: China Photos/Getty Images)

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