@wordfalling: Thank you for understanding.
@EODTech said:
@pixieface said:
The real problem with this magazine garbage is not that they might lower the chances of some dudes in the dating world, but that they help destroy the self-confidence of many, many, many young girls and grown women. These magazines, along with certain television shows, commercials, movies, comic books, billboards, etc, were part of the reason why every day during lunch hour in my high school, girls were forming lines that stretched outside of the bathroom to throw up their lunches, while simultaneously chit-chatting about denying their dinners when they got home because they were too fat and needed to diet. It's why I exercised off twice the amount of calories I took in every day all throughout my teenage years - because I thought this was okay and the norm and totally not a disease. It's why my ballet mentor was told that, while she was a brilliant dancer, she was just too fat when she auditioned for a New York professional troupe - even though she was about 90lbs. It's the reason why many of my college peers have already fucking resorted to botox.This is the problem. This is what you should be upset about.
I don't buy this "porn/magazines/media hurt women by giving them a false body image to compare themselves to" crap. If porn, media, movies, models, whatever, if those things are so influential and convincing, why are American women, to quote Lewis Black, "the fattest group of f*cks on the planet?" Not saying American men are any thinner, but we're talking women here.
Walk around any business, office, church, restaurant, movie theater, mall, etc. in the country and all you see are fat slobs everywhere.
Something like a third of our population is medically obese, and another third are overweight. This is from the CDC's website.
I had a conversation with a military recruiter a few months ago who said Army Recruiting Command did a study recently that said almost eighty percent of American youths are so fat that RECRUITERS ARE TOLD NOT TO EVEN BOTHER.
And encouraging girls to lose weight is "the problem?" No. The problem is that we are all too fat. If you want to call it unhealthy body image that is on you. Don't blame society or pornography or the media for laziness and apathy.
I... Wait, what?
I never said that all people in North America are skinny and underweight, or even that the majority are thin. We clearly live in a culture of excess, where food is both cheap and delicious and physical exertion is not exactly necessary to go about an average daily life. I never even denied that obesity was a problem, because any dummy could see that it is. I was talking about anorexia and bulimia in particular because that's what I personally lived through. I'm really not sure why you're bringing this up against me, to be honest with you.
You will also note that I purposefully left porn out of avenues of media that I believe have hurt women in the past. I don't think porn is inherently bad. It can be pretty silly but it has its place. The only thing that is purely bad for everyone are snuff films, but that is a completely different beast. I also never said that ALL magazines hurt women. Certain ad campaigns, certain characters in television shows, certain movies, certain video games, and certain comic books do not project healthy messages to women. Not all. Some. I am not blaming any one person or demographic. I am not blaming men. It's just the culture we're living in. You can say that this is a dumb excuse because Lewis Black said so and he is funny and you like him. Okay. Fine. Yet, in much the same way that we live in a culture that actively encourages people to gorge much and exercise little, we also live in a culture that commonly juxtaposes this with an unattainable vision of beauty upon women. These are conflicting messages, and conflicting messages often lead to Bad Things.
And eating disorders are a problem. This includes compulsive eating and comfort eating, which leads to obesity. The real terrible thing about eating disorders is that the weight gain, the weight loss, and the struggle to look good are all just symptoms of a more sinister problem. Eating disorders don't stem from just hunger or lust for food. They stem from self-hatred. From depression. From feeling a loss of control and thereby needing to control anything in your life, even if all you can control is how little you eat. Laziness and apathy can lead to obesity, of course, but eating disorders, like any psychological disorder, are not so simple as to be packed away into a neat little box of understanding. A lot of different people suffer from them for many different reasons.
Young girls especially are susceptible to anorexia and bulimia because they want to fit in, to be accepted, and feel like they're not worthless. They want to look like the accepted standard of beauty that is displayed in magazines, in movies, in television - you get the point. This issue in particular makes me furious because I have lived through anorexia and bulimia. I remember all those times I felt like I didn't amount to anything because I didn't look like one of these smiling models, and I just never want anyone else to go through what I went through ever again. It's awful. Even after getting help, the disease still dogs my steps. It's not something I can tell to just go away, similar to how a clinically depressed person can't just "cheer up" if someone tells them to.
Seeing this shit does not encourage girls to lose weight. When this and things like it are what you see over and over and over again since the day you were born, you understandably think that this is the norm, that this is how you look beautiful and therefore acceptable to society, and that this is what men desire. If you don't look like this, you are not good enough. No one will want you. You are worthless. You are a good for nothing. The body you were born with is something to be ashamed of.
In sum, obesity is a problem - a fact which I neither denied nor touched upon in the first place. Eating disorders are also a problem, but "eating disorder" is just a blanket term for many, many different diseases. Young girls are exposed to unrealistic bodies that they compare themselves to via many media outlets. For some, this results in body issues that may haunt them for life. For others, this can result in an eating disorder that may or may not result in actual body weight changes. In the vast majority of cases, the most important thing to consider is the mental anguish that it causes and not just the physical changes. However, the body can get so damaged by the physical duress that medical help is required. If a girl throws up her food too much, her teeth will eventually rot out from the stomach acid. If a girl starves herself too much, her heart might stop. If a girl eats too much, she risks diabetes and a plethora of other problems.
If you want to combat obesity you're going to have to do a LOT more than just say "stop being lazy", because obesity is just a symptom of a much larger problem with the culture. Please take some time to understand disorders before you condemn everyone afflicted with them.
Log in to comment