"Firstly, our bodies should not be regarded as fair game for the public to survey, analyse and then pick apart. The last I checked, our bodies belong to us – they are not public entities that are free to be scrutinised, evaluated and rated."

Not true... if they are out in view of the public - and impossible to ignore if such a view is panoramic.

Maybe you meant such scrutiny, evaluation and rating is not to be shared with the owner of the body? Moreso, if the owner of the body has more than sufficient to warrant the implied plurality of 'our bodies belong to us'?

But,

"However, when we subject people to our opinions on how they look or should/should not look, we are assuming that we have the right to police their bodies and that we somehow know what is best for them."

Must be all right when you are "a registered Clinical Psychologist specialising in the treatment and prevention of eating/dieting disorders and body image disturbances" and presumably being remunerated.

So to avoid the public scrutiny but provide the specialist opinions, I assume your practice consists solely of housecalls?

The media are only catering to a perverse, extremely narrow, insular interest!
I mean, a woman somewhere, named Kim, has a baby bump and larger breasts? So what?
I mean, isn't that what's supposed to happen to a women as a biological consequence of falling pregnant?
Perhaps if this extremely immature, narrow interest audience, were to raise their heads and look around, and perhaps start, probably for the very first time, taking an interest in their neighbours, and their well being, they would reconnect with real life; and, expand their personal horizons to the point that this sort of trash, would be just so much more, ho hum, yawn, how terribly uninteresting!
Rhrosty.

"It’s about our society’s morbid fascination with physical appearances and bodies as fodder for public gossip"

No it is not 'society' at all, it is women's vanity and preoccupation with their own appearance and that of other women. Endless comparison, nit-picking and speculative. The women's magazines, social pages and daytime talk shows are full of it and most masquerading under such laudable descriptors as 'sensitivity', 'concern', 'empathy', 'sharing' and so on.

So much of women's claimed superior communication and social skills are focussed on it.

It has nothing to do with men, who are reluctant bystanders at most. The feminists are wrong. Women are different. Get used to it. Might as well try to stop the moon in its motion.

It is hysterical that Kim Kardashian, a woman who chooses to be a human headline and makes a jolly good living out of same, was chosen as the example.

Dear me, no.

"Kim Kardashian's baby-bump fat 'crisis' is symptomatic of deep problems in how the media deal with weight."

Kim Kardashian is herself symptomatic of a deep - possibly terminal - malaise in our society's approach to life, the universe and each other.

Ms Kardashian has always been wholly and solely a media invention. Her marriage(s), her partner(s), her sex life, her diet(s) are nothing more than items of merchandise. The information on her pregnancy that has been released by her publicity department, as well as the information on her pregnancy that has been "leaked" - probably from the exact same source - are no more and no less than a continuation of the interest that we are supposed to have in the lady. Information that is as vacuous and devoid of relevance as Paris Hilton's dog-in-a-handbag.

That it should be used as the basis for an indignant article on body shape is a clear victory for the Kardashian publicity machine, and a sound defeat for relevance, sanity and a sense of proportion.

secularism has always promoted shallowness above substance. Usually the same woman who demand the right to display their bodies complain when men look at them. You don't need the body police well simply cover up.

We gave, or sold, the TV companies too much band width, & they are desperate to fill it with anything they can sell to advertisers.

They have all sorts of rubbish which may appeal to only a small market, but it perhaps brings in a few dollars.

As an old racing car driver I am interested in our Grand Prix. Having watched the all day coverage for a while I went & did the mowing.

I just could not stand all the time filling with "celebrities" I have never heard of, & never want to hear of again, interviewed by nonentity channel [probably Melbourne] "personalities", that I most definitely never want to see again.

Perhaps I'm being hard. How else were they to fill that time? It cost them some audience, as like me, they could not stand yet another gushy ageing cloths horse being asked what they thought of the Grand Prix. Thought for god’s sake. Come on fellers.