InsaneJournal

Current mood:

distressed

I can't even begin to say how horribly, horribly disturbed I am by the girl posting her "weight-loss comm" in asylum_promo. Does she really think that she's going to lose 90 pounds in just three weeks by fasting for three days and then eating a bowl of soup and a sugar-free treat? If she actually does that, and keeps doing it past the three weeks, then she won't have to worry about being thin.

She'll be dead. And she can look like a beautifully dressed rail whilst lying embalmed in her coffin.

It's attitudes like that, people who think that the old saying "you can never be too rich or too thin" is true, that make me want to vomit. Are the values that society is sending younger people today, especially young girls who should be giggling over their first crushes and enjoying life, so misguided and fucked-up that they actually think starving themselves to the point of death will make them attractive?

No, I have never had a problem with my weight. I am an even 6'0" tall in my bare feet, and I weigh 170 pounds. I've gone up the scale by 15-20 pounds at certain times, and I've fallen back down again to a little over 160. But it's never been because I've actually tried to lose weight. I recoil at the thought of dieting. To me, the word "diet" is just DIE with a T spliced onto the end of it. I'm happy with how I look, and I don't have to mangle/mutilate my body to like it.

Why does our society focus so much on how much people weigh? Yes, people should be healthy, and being grossly obese/overweight is definitely not healthy for anyone. But at the same time, being anorexic and starving yourself to death simply to try to fit some unattainable goal of "beauty" is utterly and absolutely ridiculous.

Who sets these "standards," anyway? They certainly aren't held up there by any "normal" person, the average Joe (or Josephine) Blow on the street in Everytown/city USA, or anywhere in the world for that matter. These "ideals of beauty" are set by people who want to make money, to hawk their wares at any costs, and they don't give a farking TINKER'S CUSS if their bullshite "standards" hurt people irreparably as long as they have the almighty dollar going into their bank accounts.

It literally makes me feel sick to my stomach when I see diets being advertised, or anorexic, unhealthy, drug-addicted models set up as being the height of beauty for the female form. I'm a woman. I have breasts, hips and an arse, and I'm proud of them. No, I'm not what these small-minded, idiotic, judgemental people would call "perfect." I'm not rail-thin, and I never will be. Nor would I want to be.

But I'm happy with how I look. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see a healthy (if overly tall for my tastes) female form, and I'm proud of it. Yes, I may not fit in a size 0. But my god, why would I want to? Why on earth would I give up an attractive, full-figured, real womanly shape so I could look like a sexless 10-year-old boy? I really don't think any of the men I like would be attracted to that.

I really don't understand what this societal obsession with being thin is. How did we come to be so hung-up on what we look like on the outside? It seems to me that with all the problems going on in the world we live in, we should all look to improving ourselves on the inside first and foremost. Because, judging from the state of society, we've obviously done pretty much a shite job of that.

Thin is not beautiful. Beauty does not come from having the "perfect" figure or the "perfect" weight. Beauty comes from who you are. It radiates from inside. Beauty is a person who exemplifies happiness, well-being, kindness, generosity, and loving. It doesn't matter if you weigh 100 pounds, or 300. If you are a truly beautiful person, it shows. Without you having to slowly kill yourself so that the world can see it.

All right, so I'm certainly not the world's most beautiful woman, and I probably never will be. But I'm working on it. And I know one thing -- I'm a good deal closer to being beautiful than any of those misguided little girls who starve themselves in an attempt to live up to someone else's standards of what they "should" look like to be considered an attractive female.