Body Image

I'm not big on the feminism thing. I don't mean this in terms of disagreeing with feminism or thinking it is invalid. I mean this in terms purely as its not my thing, sort of how being tidy is also not my thing. I appreciate and honor the women who have fought for it, but it is not the frame I use to analyze the world with, but recently I have been inspired by a personal trainer at 24 hr fitness asking me repeatedly if I want to work out to lose weight. I'm not sure but the obsession with skinny would probably be within the feminist realm.

I will start with the trainer. His insistence on posing this question to me over and over again in different ways, is truly heart breaking and probably the reason so many Americans are fat. I work out because I want to feel good, I want to feel my body work ( I don't like feeling like an amorphous blob) and because I'm disabled (I don't work out now and create healthy habits I will most likely be confined to a wheel chair within the next 15 years). I have told the trainer this on multiple occasions but it seems as if he cannot believe it. Which leads me to the conclusion that he has never heard anyone else (esp a woman) say it. Hating your body is a waste of time. I definitely understand why people hate their bodies, and I have spent some of my life dwelling on my big ass and my fat thighs, but plain and simple it is a waste of brain space. I think about what I eat, when I eat, and how often I'm working out all the time. But the frame in which I think about it is different. I think our consuming glutenous society is disgusting. I think a society that sits on its asses, and eats all day is disgusting. I think these are disgusting attributes not simply because I think they are lazy but because a society composed of individuals that do these things is not composed of a society that is actively engaged in loving and caring for one another, nor creating art, or even interacting with one another. Nothing good can come from it. The consumption creates a society used to getting what they want right that second, and a society that wants wants wants. This just doesn't work for the world in general, plants don't grow right away, neither do children , nor animals. It is unnatural and should be avoided in my opinion.

But I digress. The point is that we have created a society in which half of it spends a whole lot of time self loathing. This is not only sad because its shitty to hate yourself, but because they could be thinking about other things like the cure to cancer. Plain and simple they would be better to be around if they loved themselves and the way they look. They would be nicer, more confident, and did I mention they might be curing cancer (or any of the other million problems that plague this world). In any event, seems like an urgent problem to me although the solution seems difficult, since it is not something concrete like systematic change, this one requires we change the way we treat and think about one another, an active shift in culture....