"In the Middle Ages, they had guillotines, stretch racks, whips and chains. Nowadays, we have a much more effective torture device called the bathroom scale."
- Stephen Phillips
For example, I don't like to swim because I'm self-conscious about my body. Frankly, that's pretty ridiculous. Swimming is fun! Summer is warm! Friends are great! I'm going to miss out on that because I think that my Girl Scout cookie gut sticks out too far? This is absurd.
"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for example."
- John Ruskin
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we don't make friends with people based on thunder thighs or muffin tops, do we? (If you do, please don't tell me. This will defeat the purpose of my entire blog post. Ha)
Now, I order you to watch this:
What did you think? I'm a huge fan of Bradley Hathaway. I saw him live a couple of years ago and I was a fan a couple of years before that. I have his cd, book and a t-shirt. Some of his stuff is a little odd, but I love his perspective on things. Seriously, what did you think?
"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
- Francis Bacon
Anyway, I know that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "beauty is on the inside" and ... okay, I've run out of cliches. But the point is, everyone wants to be attractive. I'm going to be bold and say that as a fact. Some people hide their dissatisfaction and pretend that their perceptions of themselves don't bother them. This is considered devaluing negative outcome dimensions. Basically, we put a higher value on things like intelligence or humor than physical appearance in order to deal with our supposed short comings. I wish this wasn't the case. Why do we do this to ourselves?
"Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick."
- Gwyneth Paltrow
I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and blame the media for a lot of this. Did you know that heavier than average people on television make up 5-7% of the cast but are 60% in real life?? Thanks, media! Way to make everything disproportionate!
There was a study done where personal ads were put in the newspaper. One ad mentioned that the person was fifty pounds overweight, while the other ad mentioned a history of substance abuse. Guess which ad was responded to the most? The person with the substance abuse got more responses! People view things like drug addictions as "curable," while they view overweight people as more difficult to "change."
People, people, people. What is wrong with us? We can be so petty. I'm going to be totally honest with you all right now-- sometimes I'll be walking around campus and I shoot angry daggers at the pretty girls because they make me feel ugly and fat. This is ridiculous. I have got to stop with the negativity. There is, of course, a difference between wanting to be healthy and obsessing over the way that I look. To be healthy, I should lay off the Easter candy and make it a point to go to the gym more often, but it is unhealthy for me to give angry eyes to every pretty person walking around.
Our bodies our different from anyone else's. There's a reason for that. Some people are naturally thin, and some people are not naturally thin! This is okay. I want us to be healthy. But I also want us to be healthy, mentally.
Where am I going to start? ... By answering, "Thank you," when Anthony tells me that I'm beautiful. And that is that.
"When we lose twenty pounds... we may be losing the best twenty pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty."
- Woody Allen
Oh, and by the way, I was eating a Tootsie Roll while writing this. No big deal.
Cheers ;)
