Wednesday, April 11, 2007

SHRINKING TO FIT

ARE YOU DYING TO BE THIN? Literally??

As warm weather approaches, the "you have to shrink to fit" ads are everywhere. It makes me angry. The whole focus on being unnaturally thin is really out of hand. It should make you angry too!

Yesterday, I talked with a woman who told me she exercised 2-3 hours each day to lose weight. Last week I saw a woman who lost over 100lbs. who said she maintains her weight by exercising 3 hours a day. It takes a lot of effort for me to get in one hour.How do those women have that much time???

Those two women make time to exercise that much because thin is a primary focus of their lives. Similarly, Kelly Bliss, a former bulimic and April's Victorious Woman of the Month, said she used to spend hours each day throwing up. Like the first two women, she was desperate to be thin.

Here's why it makes me so furious: the pressure to be thin, typically directed at women, prevents us from being more of who we really want to be. Think about it. Presuming a woman is eating a healthy and balanced diet, exercising that much could only mean one of two things:
1 - She is working way too hard to maintain her weight, and is likely trying to force her body into a weight and shape that is too unrealistic for her natural type; or
2 - She is desperately unhappy. She's decided that being thin...and thinner...and thinner will make her happy. She's frantically trying to fill some black hole so she can have a meaningful life.

When you think about it, exercising 3 hours/day means 21 hours a week,(18 if you take a day off). Using that much time for exercising prevents you from doing anything else that is meaningful and that truly supports your personal or professional. Do you have any idea how much happiness or success you can create if you used those hours for your personal good??

In 21 hours/week, you could start a business, get a college degree, take your career to the next level, get a promotion at work, learn a new skill, be a volunteer for an organization that helps women in transition...the list goes on and on of good things you can do. Any of those activities, in addition to filling a woman's soul and raising your self-esteem, would also enable you to be more financially independent. That would give you more personal independence because you would have more choices in life.

Pushing women to be unnaturally thin, promoting an agenda that tells us that we have to shrink ourselves to fit some unrealistic cardboard image of attractive, is a subversive, 21st century way to keep women - YOU and ME - dependent, submissive and unable to shift our self-focus to anything else. The intention isn't any different from the travesty that has been perpetrated against women throughout the ages. The most frightening thing is that we let it happen to ourselves...and will continue to let it happen until we stay "stop" to the SHRINK TO FIT mentality.

What do you think?