7:48 pm - Wednesday, Nov. 03, 2004
Song: Fugees - Ready Or Not
This time I will not be writing about the election. Imagine that.
Today when I was walking home from school, I noticed the headline on the local family newspaper. �Love Handles: Our Children�s Epidemic.� Now I am in no way going to try to claim that there is not a problem with obesity in our culture, with our children, with our people, but I am puzzled by the mixed messages we receive from the media on this issue.
The argument has been made time and again that girls have low self-esteem and bad body image because of the images they see in the media. Advertising is an array of skeletal woman who have never had to deal with those things called hips, or pudge or rolls. They say this is why girls think they�re too fat.
Maybe we wouldn�t have taken heed of this. Perhaps we would have seen these girls, and never thought for a moment that they were a realistic version of beauty. But we never were given the chance to think they just aren�t that pretty. Instead we�re told over and again that models should ruin our body image. Hell, even DJ Tanner wanted to look like the girls in the magazines.
So they run campaigns such as Dove�s, trying to convey real bodies and send the message that any body can be seen as beautiful. They say, she�s not overweight, she�s outstanding. She looks so good, check out those curves, isn�t that hot. Be happy with your body. And I don�t disagree, because chubbier girls are usually just a million times sexier than the sticks out there.
See the path thus far: thin girls are bad, chubby girls are good. Teen girl magazine after teen girl magazine tries to make this point. Running articles about the evils of anorexia, that really just give us ideas, and story after story about how big can be beautiful too.
Then they say we�re too fat. The media says it�s bad to be too skinny, that we should be happy with who we are, and then they say we�re too fat. They say it�s an epidemic, because apparently it�s catching. All these girls are supposed to think that anything can be beautiful no matter what, but if they don�t try to be skinny, well they�re going to die. And if they over exercise, and under eat, they�re gonna die.
This is going to seem so obvious; that we should walk a line where we eat healthy and exercise regularly. But this is not the media�s way. There is nothing shocking about a headline that, bold face type, goes ahead and says, �An Apple A Day: Experts Say Eat A Healthy Diet.� No, instead we�re all dying all the time, because we�re all grossly something, but love yourself exactly as you are.
previous : next