I would consider myself a confident
young woman, content with my capabilities and the skin in which I
live. However, as a lot of individuals do, I struggle a little with
my weight. It does not help that I have one of those boyfriends who
eats food like Noo-Noo from the Teletubbies, and somehow transfers
those excess trans-fats over to me instead of him. I also have terrible
commitment problems with exercise. It is not my friend. This morning
I decided to go for a ‘run’, 20 minutes later I was back in the
sofa eating a cookie watching ‘How I Met Your Mother’. I fully
acknowledge that my NHS proclaimed overweightness is due to my own
doing and regardless, as previously stated, I remain confident in
myself.
The problem comes when individuals are
not so confident, and who can blame them when we are all constantly
being attacked by ‘fat haters’. While it is noted that men are
also bombarded with anti-fat campaigns, I feel that women are the
undeniable targets of body-related nastiness. Every magazine cover
spouts tricks for being the perfect size, and photoshops the excess
anything off their cover ladies, whilst somehow still maintaining
that you should love yourself in matter what. My computer screen is
abused daily with miracle (sometimes scary) weight loss methods.
These adverts are nearly always portraying women.
So it is not surprising that young
girls and women are turning to radical methods in order to become the
same weight as the role models of our days. Superdrug has even produced special weighing scales that conveniently inform you when
you are same weight as your favourite female celebs. This is ranging
from teenie tiny Cheryl Cole past Beyonce onto the voluptuous Adele.
It does not, however, take into account the different body shapes of
these celebs, and (of course) does not mention the fact that most of
these ladies have day-to-day training and nutrionists.
And if you think that is bad:
NEWSFLASH!! Bulimia is ART! A 27yr old woman called Millie is
producing art that (in my opinion) should cause the greatest artists
(or any artists) to rise from the grave and convene in mass protest.
Her method is as follows: (1) starve self for 2 days; (2) drink
coloured milk; (3) proceed to stick fingers down throat and make self
throw up onto a canvas; (4) do not aim, improvisation allows the
piece to come together on its own. It must be good… she has even
appeared in one of Lady Gaga’s videos ‘doing art’ all over
Gaga’s white dress. Now I am no doctor, but that cannot be a
healthy pastime, and seeing pictures of the girl, she looks knackered.
But what kind of message is this supposed to send? Granted, I am more
or less the opposite of an artist and I struggle to really ‘get’
even the greatest pieces, but celebrating a style of art like this
seems little more than dangerous.
I understand that we live in a world
now where obesity is a killer and a drain on NHS resources, but I get
the impression that where men are told to lose weight for health
reasons, women must do it to look good. And of course the latter
carries with it an (ironically) greater pressure. I could write pages on how women’s bodies are socially constructed and morphed into a
variety of shapes; one only has to look at history and cultural
differences to see that women change their bodies to how society
expects them to look. And in the society we live in today, that look
is super skinny, preferably with a reasonably sized ass, and boobs
that are the size of your face and defy all laws of gravity! Now, I
doubt that Millie is trying to tell women to deal with their weight
through bulimia, but she is legitimizing it, in fact she is making it
glamorous. The celeb scales are hardly better in their approach, 8
stone (Cheryl Cole) is not a healthy weight for most women and thus
is not a target in and of itself.
Weight loss should be relegated to the
health proportion of our lives only. As to how we look, that should
be our prerogative only. If only it were that simple… I shall now
return to my cookies.
SS
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