Linda Bacon discussed why the weight loss industry is so profitable and persuasive. If you are convinced that your body shape is wrong you'll do most anything to "fix" it. That's how something is sold daily that has a 95% failure rate. Its how people are signing up for a surgery with an outstandingly stupid crazy death rate and hasn't been proven to improve health even when it doesn't manage to kill you.
Health doesn't sell like fat hate does. Health at every size is hard to catch on because there is not really anyone to profit but you and your own instinct.
Then she discussed mascara. To sell you mascara the beauty product industry needs to sell you the idea that your natural lashes aren't good enough.
That thought and my recent addiction to Mad Men on netflix got me to thinking. How often are we sold the idea that we aren't good enough just. the. way. we. are. Just to buy something someone is peddling to us.
One look at women's magazines and you'd think the American woman's mission in life is flat tummy and pleasing him in bed. And if you could lose that much weight in one month why do you keep selling these magazines with the same goal? I think Woman's day has done nothing but regurgitate the latest diet fad for the last 30 years.
It also made me think about natural childbirth. Birth in this country has become another HUGE industry. Women have become so afraid of the birth process that just mention homebirth and you get the 'wow that's crazy or you are so brave" comments. Our bodies were made to birth. We don't need IV's, pitocin, surgery except in true emergencies, But its hard to tell what a true emergency is at a hospital because they've convinced us that its so freaking dangerous we might as well just get those things from the start. I don't think I did any thing special by birthing without drugs. When I beat the natural childbirth drum its not to say Look at what I did! I did it better than you. I am saying I wish women knew how amazing this process is when unmessed with! I think you can do it!!! I bet you could do it BETTER than I did!
I've already said I think this is a full on attack from the Adversary. And I think he's winning. Four out of five women are dissatisfied with the way they look.
Dissatisfied women have the potential to raise daughters with body image issues. There is an excellent post here about changing the tide for the next generation from Allison Dickson:
I sat her down last night and I told her that the path I took at her age, the one where I noticed for the first time (with help from others) that I was "fat," was blocked. That she would not go the way I did. She wouldn't be the one searching desperately for a solution, no matter how destructive, to a problem that doesn't exist. A non-existent problem that only becomes a problem when we try to solve it. I told her that I would not allow her to be driven by shame and loathing, from herself or others.
I know that I have done this to her, and it is perhaps my greatest failure as a parent. But I didn't realize then the damage I was doing. That hating myself in front of her was teaching her to hate herself.
It's not too late to fix it, though. Of this, I am sure. My intelligent, generous, loving, artistic, funny, compassionate, animal-loving (and, yes, beautiful) daughter will know how very precious she is. I will teach her the habits I should have had at her age. That to live, love, sing, dance, run, swim, laugh, cry, and eat is all part of being a human, and that her long legs, her wide hips, the pooch of her belly -- however they may grow or change shape as she ages or bears children someday -- are a lovely vehicle in which to do all of those things, and she should cherish it and nurture it and love it. Not starve it or cut it or deny it or hate it.
When we start looking outside ourselves for reasons to like ourselves, our worth all of sudden exists in the external.
I do it, even when I wrote about liking yourself right now just the way you are, I talked about makeup and hair.
This is dangerous.
We can start to care more about what we weigh, what we wear, where we live, what we drive, how our house is decorated, how exercising will make us look not how it will make us feel. And the thing is none of that will make us happy.
Since my mascara a-ha moment I've looked at my daily practices and the root cause of them. I still love makeup and fixing my hair. But I also don't mind leaving the house without those. I try to remember the Young Woman's theme more than commercial rhetoric.
We are daughters of our Heavenly Father who loves us and we love him.
that's what its all about.
I don't need mascara.
I don't need designer clothes.
What I wear places is not as important as what I DO when I get there.
My home is a home with or without decorations or hardwood floors.
Driving a minivan isn't embarrassing. Its a car that gets me and my family from A to B, A porsche would do the same thing.
A refurbed laptop does what I need as well as the latest Ipad.
Thrift store clothes on my kids are just as good as clothes from the mall.
etc. etc. etc. (King and I anyone?)
** Its funny to me that Allergan the maker of LabBand also is the company behind Botox and Latisse the eyelash growing goo - that may or may not give you racoon eyes for life.
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