SubscribeThe Glamor Side of Thin Always Wins
There are two reasons for our obsession with thinness: 'health' or 'desirability'. Many will do anything to get thin for 'glamor's' sake, but under the guise of health.
It seems that we humans take extreme measures - that can be exceedingly unhealthy - in order to fit into the body beautiful culture.
A recent episode of 20/20 examined Lipo-Dissolve - and showed the pain and ghastly results some victims were left facing. Just watching these women, who were all beautiful with 'good' bodies to start with, you'd never have thought that any of them needed help from lipo-dissolve or anything else. Yet by their own admission they were 'excited' to part with thousands for the promise of perfectionism.
The Allure and the Lies
The allure of Lipo-Dissolve over surgical procedures is obvious: it promises a quick and easy fix. No hospital admission - it's done at the day spa, no cutting, no blood, no time off work - just a few innocent injections - right? Wrong! In their expose, 20/20 show how clinic staff blatantly lied about results and side-effects. One staff member claimed it's approved by the FDA - it isn't! And none of the experts interviewed could say what really goes into these injections.It's not only costly treatments such as Lipo-Dissolve that lure us. Some people admit to using recreational drugs (like speed and amphetamine-based drugs), while others admit their cigarette smoking is an attempt to curb their appetite. Becoming more prevalent amongst college students is 'drunkorexia' , where nutritional food calories are substituted with 'empty' alcohol calories. And what about the abuse of laxatives and diuretics taken in the name of weight control?
The Big 5 Industries
Let's not forget, those pharmacy shelves with their never ending array of 'approved' appetite suppressants, fat burners and the like. How healthy are they really?
- The 'diet program industry' industry is BIG business. (So LA weight loss, Pure Weight, Dr. Atkins and who knows how many have been sued - does the public ever notice?).
- The cosmetic surgery industry is BIG business. (Hundreds of day spas are being sued - but like daisies in the spring more keep popping up)
- Weight loss surgery is BIG business (Never mind it's high rate of post surgery complications and deaths - it's still on the increase)
- The diet pills, powders and patches industry are BIG business. (Do consumers ever remember those stimulant-based, highly addictive products like Ephedera that were eventually banned?)
- The diet food industry is BIG business. (Never mind how much controversy there is about their artificial ingredients like aspartame, or about false labelling - they still fly off the shelves.)
So what's the point?
The point is that buying into these measures is driven by a culture where the demands for youthfulness and body beautiful are outrageous. David Herzog, MD, director of the Harvard Eating Disorders Program points out it's due to the 'culture of extremes' - a drive for extreme perfectionism. Being average is no longer good enough.Those four victims of Lipo-Dissolve are all physically unhealthier now AND have emotional wounds too. In the Western world people are getting fatter in spite of (or maybe that should be BECAUSE of) diets, diet foods and everything else that goes with this ridiculous drive for beauty at all costs!
What is it going to take before we wake up and realize that what's got the win when it comes to thin isn't our health, but appearance?
Written by Cari Corbet-Owen, clinical psychologist and author of Mind over Fatter and The Joy-Filled Body.
I blame a lot of this on the media the pressure to look perfect is relentless, we have it all the time it's no wonder we have things done even though it doesn't always need doing.
ReplyNo kidding! It drives me NUTS to see the cover of a magazine touting the latest celebrity who lost 20 lbs -- in spite of the fact that she wasn't overweight to start with.
ReplyI think that's a big reason that eating disorders are on the rise. You see these magazines telling you how to lose 10 lbs quickly and the people ON the magazine are about 10 lbs underweight anyway. Sure, maybe some people need to lose weight, but not everyone does (which is what the magazine is implying...hey, everyone needs to lose 10 lbs, right?). I'm guessing a lot of people look at those magazines and say "I'd look just like that if I lost a little more weight". And of course, if they don't want to do it the healthy way, they'll resort to liposuction or one of those liquid fasts to do it.
ReplyI do get tired of people blaming the media. At the end of the day if it wasn't profitable they wouldn't do it. It really is up to all of us - society as a whole - to stop buying this crap and change the rules.
ReplyOne new york study found that the average model is 9% taller than the average woman and 16% thinner than what she should be to be MEDICALLLY healthy!
A Scandanavian study found that shope manneguins if they were real live people would have only 14% body fat which meets the first criteria for anorexia nervosa!
Flagrantly unrealistic AND unhealthy.
ReplyI have read this piece over several times and the general wrongheadness that as likely as not stems from the 20/20 piece pervades the entirety. I am not at all pleased with the overall anti-weight loss tone as though somehow pursuing a non-obese state is in an of itself a personal failing.
That notwithstanding, an indictment of a medical procedure as performed at "the dayspa" says nothing about the same procedure as performed by licensed physicians in a medical setting. Mesotherapy with or without the components of lipodissolve is an increasing accepted adjunct to other cosmetic procedures. Shady operators don't ultimately change that.
ReplyAs I posted in the other thread, I think our culture of thinness is in a large part behind the amount of obesity seen.
I wish the focus could be on (true) health, not a certain look. That's what I try to emphasize myself. Yet people continue to push a certain look, often under the guise of health when it quickly becomes obvious that whether someone is healthy is not relevant to them unless they look like the current cultural ideal.
And this striving for "perfection" you see now is not mentally healthy, and often not physically healthy. Definitely not a true health focus.
Our culture creates extremes by promoting an unhealthy relationship with ourselves and with food.
ReplyI agree with this article but i found it interesting that you refered to the lipo disolve users who got bad results as 'victims.' I can't help but think of them as the suckers who fell for this and got burned.
There's no such thing as an easy fix. If you diet and exercise and still hate your body then maybe what you really need is a litlle self acceptance.
ReplyJC,
Yes - there is an aspect of being responsible for one's own actions here.
There's so much money behind this incessant pounding on human weakness. I don't have a solution, but I sure don't feel like calling them "suckers".
ReplyWhat would you call them?
ReplyGood question. I can't find a word that doesn't have some emotive spin, one way or the other.
We have sex education and drivers ed in our high schools. Perhaps what we need is a class that covers the ABCs of living well in a world dominated by advertising, celebrity, and mass media. A fun course filled with examples of fraud, manipulation, and the power of money. Examples from Fast Food Nation and Up In Smoke. Projects where they trace the funds behind propositions and candidates.
It might create a whole new pool of hucksters, but I think education is the only tool we have...
Replyhi - my reply yesterday was swallowed by the diet blog spam checker (maybe because i used html directives ). all i said was - it's a good question. i can't think of a word that doesn't have an emotional spin one way or the other ("victim", "chump", "taken", etc). and, given sex education and drivers ed, maybe it's time to consider consumer education.
ReplyYes-- just read Ben's comment. Some people buy that a lookist society, regardless of negative consequences, is good- perhaps even necessary. If that does not suggest a huge push of those ideas, nothing could.
I have to have some sympathy for those who lose sight of themselves and what's really important in succombing to external pressures. After the years I spent with an eating disorder, I would be a hypocrite if I did not.
ReplyWell I think we're victims of insidious marketing attempts, that lure people in with false promises. Sure we all make our own decisions, and we need to remember that if something sounds too good to be true it usually is - so all these fairy godmother promises usuallly turn out to be empty promises at best and harmful at worse.
ReplyThis "culture of extremes" talk seems to show a misunderstanding of humanity. Beauty is important to every human culture, present and past.
"Extreme" measures to enhance beauty have been common worldwide throughout history.
There's nothing unusual about it. And to treat it as unusual and try to create a "backlash" against it is counter to human nature. The only result will be widespread unhappiness and ultimately failure.
It's time to stop hiding from the fact that looking good is good. Trying to look good is a useful, productive, and constructive effort. Telling people not to bother is destructive.
ReplyWell here's how I see it... beauty is whatI think of as a 'surface truth'... something that changes from one culture to the next, one historical period to the next. It's defined by the culture your find yourself in. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with trying to be beautiful - but there are so many other aspects to beauty than just what our society sells as as being beatiful. Even someone who is unattractive physically can be beautiful when they are confident and when they remember that they are valuable and worthwhile no matter their size, shape, color etc.. etc...
ReplyBIG SECRET NUMBER 687346823:
Looking great - attractive to the majority of human beings you come in contact with - is a natural side benefit to eating well and taking part in reasonable levels of exercise.
That's it. That's the big secret. Now everyone reading this owes me $29.95 plus all applicable state and local taxes. And if you sign up now, you get free DVD copies of my courses entitled "WATER: WET OR WHAT?" and "THE SKY; IT'S BLUE, PEOPLE!"
The problem is that the U.S. has become a nation of instant gratification morons who have lost the meaning of, much less the capacity for, patience. We want it NOW, thanks to everyone from FDR to MTV. We don't want, or feel we need, to work for anything any more. Sacrifice is an outdated concept, like responsibility, or duty. Just cut it off, inject it away, prescribe me a pill, I'm an American, dammit and I deserve the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow and if you don't give it to me right now I will pitch a fit!
Lazy sonsabit.....never mind. Sorry. Didn't mean to go off on a rant there.
ReplyAmen, JimK! The whole instant-gratification thing is a big problem in our country. Not just for weight loss, but for just about everything else too. People have a hard enough time waiting 90 seconds for microwave popcorn...how can we expect them to wait 6 months or so to start seeing results from losing weight healthfully? So people want the quick fix and they do a liquid cleanse diet or get liposuction. And of course, if they can get a bargain, they'll snap it up in a hurry. And if there's anything that can be learned from Tara Reid, it's that the WalMart-quality liposuction surgery just looks like crap after a couple years.
ReplyYeah, everything but hitting the gym and doing the big lifts(deadlift, squats, press, bench, rows). That would be too HARD.
ReplyThat previous post was in honor of Ryan, our resident weight lifting freak.
ReplyI have to disagree with the author's position on weight loss surgery. Although I am a surgeon, I do not do that type of surgery, and I feel I have an objective view of the situation. The benefits of these procedures are lifesaving for those who cannot save themselves any other way. I do not consider the complication or death rate excessive considering the risks of any surgery, the population that is undergoing the surgery and the alternative to not having the surgery. Lastly, I do not think becoming an alcoholic, or gambler, or any other new addiction which can replace the prior problem is a post operative complication. As with any individual having a major life altering procedure, all aspects of the individual's life need to be addressed with whatever means can be found to help them with the change.
ReplyI tend to agree with Heather...we need to get away from being a society focused on thinness and start focusing more on overall health. It's too bad that people end up with complications from things like Lipo-dissolve, but you know what? Sometimes it takes a big disaster like that to knock sense into some people. You can't have your cake and eat it too...surgery is surgery and whether it's elective or not, there are always complications that can arise. If you go to a surgeon who's very "reasonable" price-wise and isn't board certified just to get a bargain, you're sort of taking some chances. And as for Lipo-dissolve, people need to be doing their research on it before getting it done...if they did that, they'd know it wasn't FDA-approved prior to going in.
It's just sad to me that so many people are willing to risk their lives and spend all their money just to be thinner. Some people die from complications from surgery, some people end up really disfigured from complications. My opinion is: If you don't need to go under the knife, don't. I understand that some people really do need certain elective procedures to correct really bad deformities or have their features reconstructed, but I don't count lipo as one of those procedures.
ReplyOf course, you could have a law where a surgeon who doesn't have a residency in plastic surgery will lose their license if they perform any kind of plastic surgery. I mean, that is the law we have here in Brazil and let's not kid ourselves: the US has a much better equipped justice system than we do. If we can be that strict and you guys can't, it is because you guys don't want to.
It is an absurd that you have GPs and ophthalmologists doing cosmetic surgery for cash. They should all lose their licenses.
ReplyHI Spectra and Heather.... I'm with you! My Mind over Fatter programme has as it's focus HEALTH GAIN rather than weight loss. And not just physical health gain but also psychological because sadly, the people who are most likely to fall for quick fixes are the ones with low self-esteem - so they need more than just physical health help, they need psychological boosting too.
ReplyCari
Spectra - in 40/50 years cyborg body replacements will be available and none of these issues will matter anymore. Almost makes me want to laugh(or cry)?
ReplyI want to go back to the original statement - that people choose glamour over health. Consider the fact that originally, looking good and health were inseparable - social biologists would say that for survival of the race, people would choose a man or woman because they were trying to ensure the perpetuation of their genes. A woman who looked strong, well built, clear eyes, shiny hair, good teeth, etc. had a higher probability of giving birth to healthy children and surviving to raise them. A man of similar attributes would be seen as able to provide for and protect his family.
Human nature being what it is, the importance of some of these attributes has grown distorted over time. (ie. big breasts in women, big muscles in men) even if they are really no longer really serving the original purpose. Some societies idealized some traits, media picked up on this, we kept purchasing their tv shows and magazines and hence they kept producing them and as things became more extreme a certain segment of society decided that they should look like this odd ideal that was created. It isn't universal - there are still places that being quite large is considered attractive. And my Sudanese friend was absolutely at a loss to understand the western obsession with thin - having been a child soldier and resident of a refugee camp his only experience was with figuring out how to get enough clean water and food to survive.
I'd be a hypocrite if I said I didn't want to be a particular weight because I like to look good as much as I want to be healthy. Personally, I just won't go to the extreme of sacrificing health for weight, although somedays the "quick fixes" are tempting. How many of us would really say, I would be happy to look like absolute crap, as long as I'm healthy? Most of us would like both, and historically one did go hand in hand with the other.
ReplyI couldn't agree more that the media and our culture as a whole creates a completely unrealistic expectation for women.
I am a 22-year-old in college, and it is frightening to look around campus and point out all of the women who likely have major eating disorders.
That is the reason why I chose to do a class project that empowers women to love themselves and reject the media's image of what an "ideal" body type is. This project is extremely important to me, as is this issue, and I am including the public service announcement my group created to address this serious problem. Feel free to watch it and give feedback!
ReplySorry, here is the video link
http://www.facebook.com/share_redirect.php?h=0c00dcd8dc92c141c1ad852afcbbcac0&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DWLLXNXoBTFg&sid=17607605830
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