Do you have a fat ass? Who cares?!

Is anyone else just straight up annoyed with the media these days?

Seriously.

I could care less about Meghan McCain and the stupid woman who took an unconscionable swipe at the size of her rear.

Rather, we should be having a conversation about the ad hominem attacks so frequent among pundits and how such comments are damaging to young women's perceptions of their own bodies.

It's a tale almost as old as time itself.

The female body has long been a site for control.

Modern print ads often show nubile female forms, partially clothed and oftentimes headless, or legless. The female torso is a *huge* form in advertising.

While the female body is sectioned into pieces in ads, it is also the site of countless surgeries to lift, tuck, pinch, suction, cut, peel, reduce, augment, and revise the natural body.

Cellulite is the abnormality in this dysfunctional view rather than the norm.

Stretch marks, too.

What does this tell girls about themselves?

*You are not good enough just as you are*.

It doesn't matter what's in your mind. It's the size of your waist that matters the most.

Or your breasts.

Or your [insert body part].

There is so much pressure to conform to an impossible ideal of weight and beauty and youth.

Show me a classroom full of 12 year girls, and I'll show you a group of young women who fear being ugly, fat, or visually unworthy of attention from the male gaze. That panoptic gaze that follows them into the lunchroom, into the headphones on which they listen to their pop-idols, and into their developing sense of self.

What about their minds? Their hearts? Their actions?

These are the things that women should be valued for.

Not how attractive they are, how young they are, or the size of their ass.