Fitness Mags' Bikini Bods Promote Eating Disorders

No single thing causes eating disorders, but fitness magazines and their hard-bodied celeb cover models aren't helping, writes Katie Drummond. "Like heroin for the eating disordered, they offer misleading diet information, along with airbrushed photos of impossible physical ideals," she writes for True/Slant. One in particular has sunk to a new low: Shape put an Photoshopped, bikini-clad Katharine McPhee of American Idol ofame on its February cover. McPhee is an outspoken recovered bulimic.

"After purging as often as seven times a day, for five years, you’d think McPhee would know better than to perpetuate the very same unrealistic physical ideal she admits to struggling with," writes Drummond. She's quick to commend McPhee for celebrating her recovery, but "posing—in a bathing suit—on the cover of a magazine that offers tips on how to 'Drop a Pound by Friday' makes you a hypocrite." Shame on her—and on Shape.

(More Fitness magazine stories.)