!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, I was just posting a comment on my friend's xanga page, and I saw one of those banners where you answer a question and you can win a free iPod or whatever. Usually they are pretty innocuous, though still quite stupid, like "Which one of these actresses is Mary-Kate Olsen?" with three pictures of blonde people. This one had a picture of Lindsay Lohan, and asked, "How much does Lindsay Lohan weigh?" What the hell is wrong with our society???!?!?! Every so often I am filled with such anger at this culture, its hyperanalytic obsession of bodies and beauty that drives each member mad in some way or another. It is so absurd to me that this country is so obsessed with diets and thinness when there is so much hunger in the world. I'm guilty of being consumed by it too, and I know how consuming it can be, that the width of your stomach becomes the most important consideration in your life. It just amazes me how pervasive it is. That even these stupid banner quizzes concern themselves with someone's weight. Lindsay Lohan is a beautiful girl; why won't they let her just be a beautiful girl? Why isn't that enough? I'm so completely tired of seeing these magazines tracking the internal torture of anorexic (or at least too-thin) celebrities. I saw one in the grocery store with the headline: "Nicole Richie gains 3 lbs!!!" accompanied by a picture of her eating a sandwich quickly. I don't mean to be presumptive, but I would imagine that celebrities that weigh under 100 pounds (and are not 4'8") are exhibiting signs of some kind of problem, and I can't even imagine what it would be like to undergo that kind of pressure in the public eye, to see pictures of yourself eating on magazines. It's bad enough for regular people.I guess my big question is "Why do we care?" Where did this come from? What makes people in our society think that they have the right to scrutinize people in this way? What will make them stop wanting to?
posted by siobhan @ 1:52 PM
3 Comments:
Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to make the rest of my text not huge. Just stand far away from your computer.
Hahaha! Oh dude, people are silly. Really. To make myself feel better about my tum, I just look at all the people that I think are beautiful and who also have tums and asses and legs that are larger than "acceptable" and that makes me feel better about myself and the world. U needn't get sucked into the whole weight thing - it's hard but...that's only one segment of the world who is so obsessive.
By the way, thanks for you posts! They cheer me up soo much! V. insightful as well. Take care! xx
I feel better about my relative success in pulling myself out that cycle, but it was just so dismaying when I did, because then I realized, "Fuck, the rest of you are like that too." I never realized how pervasive it was until I separated myself from it.
In sum, Irish nunnery!!!
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