Angelina, please don't eat any cheeseburgers...those are junk food anyway!

As I was engaging in my daily net-surfing earlier today, I came across a couple of pages dedicated to Angelina Jolie's appearance at this year's Oscars.

What I read wasn't entirely unfamiliar to me (I had seen similar tweets on my timeline during the red carpet pre-show coverage), but it was disturbing nonetheless. To put it mildly: there's a vast number of people out there concerned about Jolie's health (*cough*) to the point where they'd like to buy her a Happy Meal at McDonald's. Please.

Amidst the comments, that were literally dissecting her appearance, a few of them read: "skeleton", "vampire", "ghost", "dead", "starved dog" and my ultimate (least) favourite "holocaust survivor look". The amount of criticism on her weight (and pale skin) is nothing short of unbelievable, and it's surprisingly only this harsh when aimed at a skinny person.

Noone goes around commenting "stop munching in your shower" whenever they see say Melissa McCarthy or Octavia Spencer, now, do they? If all those comments stemmed from a genuine concern, you'd expect that there would be people wanting to put Melissa and Octavia in a Weight Watchers programm, but, apparently that's not the case. The politically correct stance these days is that it's perfectly acceptable to be overweight, because it shows that you're comfortable in your own skin; Once you're thin or too thin, however, it seems that you have to swallow the judgmental looks and remarks that come with the territory. As if being thin makes you a lesser human being (and not just weight-wise).

Will people ever understand that judgement and discrimination based on a person's outer appearance is always wrong, regardless if you're white, black, fat, thin, tall, short, blonde, indian, or albino? It's always hurtful, always counter-productive. Put yourself in that person's shoes, would you want to be looked at so closely for something that for the most part comes with who you are? I think not.

"Would you want your daughter looking to her as a role model?" read a few other comments. Well, personally I'd like my daughter (if I ever have one) to be able to look past whatever's spoon fed to her as this month's "role model" from pop culture and see other people for who they really are, which is a whole lot more than just a number on a scale or a short and shallow description of physical attributes. I'd want her to know that classifying another human being based on appearance alone is futile and I'd wish she'd be able to laugh at stereotypes such as "blonde equals dumb", "tall equals clumsy", "fat equals extrovert" and "thin equals anorexic". At the very least I'd like her to weigh in (pun intended) on any situation, not before having given some well-rounded thought into the matter.

In the meantine... Angelina will still offer her help to those in need, thin or not. So whose health are we pining for exactly?