Amazing to see someone in the skating world admitting this. I've always deplored figure skating for (in my opinion) practically mandating anorexia among young female skaters, and I became a fan of Emily specifically because she was the one skater who bucked this trend and actually had a figure. (To me, "in shape" means curvy, not skeletal.) But of course, over the summer, all I read at various forums (many worse than here) were mean-spirited attacks on Emily's then-shapely figure, and all I could think of was, "God, I hope she isn't reading this nonsense."
Well, I guess she must have been reading it, because sure enough, she has now starved herself to a supposedly more "acceptable" size, and has it helped matters? No, not at all. Harmed her, in fact.
It's a problem that's not exclusive to the skating world, but how sad to see it so prevalent in skating -- weight loss is presented as some kind of magic cure-all for anything. But of course it's NOT, and it can do more harm than good.
"Thinner" does NOT automatically equal "better" -- not for performance and not (unless a person likes fashion-model emaciation, which it seems a lot of skating fans do) for looks either.
I did NOT mean to suggest that Emily was starving herself. From videos that I saw of her SP and practices at Midlantic, yes, she has lost some weight since midsummer. I hardly think she was prompted to lose the weight because of comments on FS boards. I think she was a little over what she used to be when she was competing, and maybe she found it hard to skate with the extra pounds, so she worked on taking it off. But she is hardly "skinny" now---just close to what she was when she last competed.