More about body image

Sorry it took a while, but I've been busy with this and that. Anyway, to whoever's reading, here are my thoughts on body image.

The funny thing is, I never thought about this until [just realized this detail is too personal since it will make you realize a good deal about where I may come from - so suffice it to say that someone told me about this]. Well, it was then that I realized it. Our media is absolutely obsessed with The Beautiful People and that leads to the Thin People being considered the beautiful. Now, I seem to recall an article somewhere which told me that from a very young age, people have a natural inclination to find thinner people attractive. Perhaps this is something left behind from our caveman times, when the thinner people were the better ones at hunting and gathering. Whatever the case may be, I honestly have no problem with this. It might inspire the plump, inactive, unhealthy people (such as me) to get off their butts and lose that fat.

What does annoy me is the fact that this slight natural preference for thinner people has somehow turned into a societal obsession. Now fatter people are considered ugly and the thinnest of people are considered 'fat'. FAT is one of the biggest ways a girl can insult another girl and people with weight problems (didn't want to use the word fat too much!) are given negative qualities and are always the 'sidekicks' or the unpopular people in movies until they lose weight. The one glorious exception is, of course, Hairspray, but this is one comparitively less popular movie compared to 1000+++++ other box office no 1 films.

And what is even worse, losing weight is such an obsession among the fashion and beauty industry that people are quite literally dying to lose weight. Yes, I'm talking about anorexia and bulimia. Like Botox and other forms of plastic surgery, this is one of the practices obviously prevalent in the film and TV industry yet is rarely admitted to unless by a few brave souls (this is an even better metaphor than I thought!).

So what do we do? Because when I think about this, it seems like one of a million huge problems our world has to conquer - sadness, poverty, starvation, clean water, GLOBAL WARMING, violence, oppressive governments, fossil fuels etc (a lot of these are linked - what does that tell you?). But, like every other problem it can be eradicated one person at a time. We should start teaching about this in schools (as some already do), begin writing letters to our representatives in the government about this. On a personal level, every girl can tell her friends that they ARE NOT fat, they DO NOT need to go on a diet, or anything else and they are perfect as they are.

So just like France has banned glamorizing anorexia, let's try to do the same (okay, the one thing I will give away is that I do not live in France). To anyone who is reading, keep guessing!

I am one of those bloggers who does not secretly want to be 'discovered' and made into a book. I have written too many actual personal details, so if anyone who really knows me read this, they would know who I was. Sure, I want to have my 15 minutes of total fame just like everyone else (just to know what it's like), but not this way. And not longer than 15 minutes!