It seems like in today's world everyone wants you to be skinny, especially females. I'm not saying that I am against girls being thin, but I am against them endangering their health to do so. My neighbor when I lived in New York was anorexic, she was severely underweight but believed she was fat. She would run mile after mile, refuse food, raising concern with her family and friends. She was sent to a facility in Arizona that specifically helps young females who suffer from anorexia several times, each time she would come back a little bit healthier but immediately fall back into her old habits once she was home. While it might be a deep seeded issue with many that goes further than what society has placated upon them with the fashion and movie industries, it seems to me that is a large part of the problem. The media shows us paper thin models and celebrities in magazines, ads, movies, commercials, internet ads etc, what most people don't realize is that at least in still frame photography these models are heavily edited with graphic programs like Photoshop. In most cases these models don't look half as good in person as they do in print, its lies, fabrication, made to make you think this image is attainable. And with the media telling us this is what we should find beautiful, this is what our women should look like, its damaging to us as a whole. Less than 5% of the total female population in the world looks anything like the women portrayed in popular media, causing nearly all women to restrict their eating habits, continuously go to the gym, and use unhealthy dieting routines, all to attain the unattainable image created by the media.
Ask any random person on the street which of two photos of two different women they find more attractive holding one of a skinny girl and one of a normal/average weight girl, they will in most cases choose the skinny girl. If you ask them why, its a perplexing question, they don't really know why when you get to the root of the question. The answer for me is yes the skinny girl, but this has more to do with the fact that I myself am very skinny, not by choice mind you, but I would feel somehow wrong if I were with a girl that was larger than myself, its a strange thing to ponder why weight would have so much to do with our attraction to a person. I wonder that if the media weren't infecting our minds with images of the heroin chic if our interpretation of beauty would change.
What is even more strange to me is that we all expect females to be skinny and to work towards it, yet if you are a male and are skinny its the opposite, people want you to gain weight and be muscular. Being in this situation I hear this nearly constantly from family, friends, and new acquaintances. I am constantly told "why don't you eat more", "eat something" "you look like you need to eat" etc, this very frustrating to hear. Especially because I do eat 3 meals a day, I don't starve myself and I am not 'trying' to be skinny, I have high metabolism, I have a small skeletal frame, these are genetic features passed to me by my father who is the same way. I do go to the gym, I lift weights, I can run over 7 miles flat out without stopping yet I cannot gain weight or muscle bulk. I've been told to take creotine, metabolic stimulants and even steroids to attain the image that is expected of me as a man. Yet I know in my head that no matter how hard I try, how many drugs I pump into my body I will not look like Channing Tatum or anyone like him. To me as an individual it makes me feel unattractive that I am so skinny and relatively unable to change my image, and I find it an insult in the same fashion as a fat person does when they are called fat. And more often than not I find that someone who is overweight despises me for being skinny and it is somehow ok for them to pick on me for it. I am supposed to let it just roll off my shoulder because if I come back and make a fat joke their insecurity of weight will kick in and I somehow have crossed the line instead. It is a very strange world we live in; where its not ok to be yourself, its not ok to be different, its not ok to be smart, its not ok to be outside of the norm, I say FUCK that, be different, be you, you are beautiful in your own way and society can suck it.
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