Women have always been very conscious about their looks and appearance and have always looked forward to receiving admiration from others – both men and women. This desire was induced in them by Nature so that they could attract the male attention and unite with them in order to procreate and continue the existence of their species. So it has an evolutionary significance.But in these days of media’s bombardment about the ideal figure that a lady should have in order to be admired by all, the craze for hour-glass-figure has reached obsessive levels. Young girls are starving themselves to death in order to make that unrealistic figure theirs. Girls are going on crash diets to lose those, not extra, but very necessary pounds. In order not to be left behind even women are joining gym, aerobic classes and even dance classes. Fine, they are exercising themselves to burn all those extra pounds, burgers and pizzas that they are tempted to eat. They can be healthy exercises as long as they are supplemented with nutritious food. But many, in their enthusiasm to acquire “Aishwaryarai” figure, go on indulging in unhealthy dietary practices that make them lose vital nutrients from the body, exposing themselves to various disorders like migraine, irritable bowel syndrome and even hormonal imbalances. Many get into psychological depression as they fail to fit into those jeans or own those glamorous vital statistics!
I would like to mention here two psychological disorders called “anorexia nervosa” and “bulimia” that can afflict young women and middle aged women. In “anorexia nervosa”, people starve themselves to lose weight and become pencil thin that can be disastrous to their physical and mental health. In “bulimia”, people go on an eating binge, unable to hold back temptation to eat and then they purge themselves of all the eaten food by either vomiting or through loose stools as a result of taking laxatives. Both the conditions have very serious repercussions on the body organs and they can become fatal.
I agree that all of us desire to look ‘prim and propah’ with ideal figures. But let our dreams be realistic according to our height n weight, age and our health conditions. Meet a dietitians and find out how much you are overweight or underweight and make suitable dietary changes and life style changes to bring about the look that you desire. Also let us remember that it is our inner beauty and strength that adds sheen to our looks and not our figures and fineries. Let not our obsessions kill us – physically, emotionally or spiritually.
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I was inspired to write this after I read a post in Ruhi’s:
“http://havetoremember.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/love-me-for-my-soul/“
Living in the West, I am aware how even some primary school-going young girls want to be skinny and go without lunch to trim their shape.
Diet plays an important part in determining one’s body mass index (BMI). In my younger days in Mysore,it was difficult to see ‘big women’as the daily diet had generous component of fresh vegetables and fruits. Fast foods were unknown and although butter and ghee were used to some extent, they were more than compensated by
the presence of generous portions of vegetable dishes. The kind of diet and the healthy baths women and girls took those days kept them looking trim and healthy. There was no necessity to go to a gym as people took to bicycles and more walked to work, colleges and schools. Western diseases like type 2 diabetes and coronary heart diseases were not common. Whenever I visit India, I am surprised by the fat content in the food which is geared towards a
quick preparation. There is talk of gym subscription and home gyms as ‘status’ indicators while my friends busily much their fast food. In these conversations I often struggle to make a point about bicycling and walking!!
Very necessary to say to those’ dieting girls’ that controlled fat on bones is indeed necessary, and the best way to achieve this is to concentrate on food ( not lack of it) and simple exercises.
i completely agree with u, mr ram.
all those diseases like diabetes, coronory artery diseas, obesity, alcoholism etc are all “life style diseases”. since the life style of people in urban india has changed so much, all these diseases have crept in. life has become very sedentary and people lack exercise. added to it is the fast food culture and instant mixes that contain more artificial colourings and preservatives than nutrition. all this with the excuse of “no-time”. but where are we all running? where do we intend to reach? what are we going to achieve? peace?? happiness??? belongingness???
people are getting disillusioned faster these days; young children are facing “burn outs”. more depression cases and more number of suicides……….
we all need to rethink and redefine our lifestyles……
“BUT WHAT IF I GET LEFT BEHIND IN THIS (RAT)RACE???” this is the phobia everybody is struck with!
Hi Latha,
//Also let us remember that it is our inner beauty and strength that adds sheen to our looks and not our figures and fineries.
I kind of disagree with this statement. The inner beauty and strength is extremely important, but this doesn’t mean that being over weight is fine. Both need to be taken care of.
PS- I would have appreciated it if you could have provided a link to my post.
thaks, ruhi, for visiting my blog and placing a comment. i am honoured by this visit by a celebrity in ‘bloggywood’!
i agree that inner beauty n strength alone may not be sufficient to look good, but for those who constantly grumble about not gifted with good looks, this statement helps to boost the self esteem. they sure need to put in hard work to gain those dreamy figures.
about adding the link to your article, i am sorry i could not add it in my post as i am new to blogging and need to still learn how to embed links inbetween. it is lil cumbersome for me as i have to switch between two blogs, copy-paste and all that. i am yet to learn the technicalities. however, i have already addded a link to your blog and it can be seen under the list of my fav blogs on the left hand side column of my blogspace.
“Also let us remember that it is our inner beauty and strength that adds sheen to our looks and not our figures and fineries.” I loved this sentence. I completely and fully agree with this. I am naturally thin, I do not diet, and some people think this is a blessing, others snigger. You know, among us teenagers, everyone wants to look good. I keep noticing how deissastisfied they all seem. A girl by name of Gayathri asked, “Hey, what do you do to maintain your complextion?” I said I did nothing. She said I was lying. I then told her that if I was good in one thing, I always had some sort of defect. I have scanty hair. Thin, useless hair. Yours is thick and firm. I think you need to be grateful for that!” I said. She was like “Yeah…but still…” I was told that it takes courage to admit things like that. Normally what teenagers do is hide our defects. I think that’s stupid. I don;t do it. I sometimes feel sorry for those frustrated lot out there, caught by the thought that beauty is only about lipstick and looking beautiful.
While I believe that character is always the ultimate worth of a person, study upon study has found that the hip to waist ratio of .7 is valued across all cultures here .
lakshmi, as a young PU student u display such high levels of maturity in ur thinking! congrats!
yes, it requires maturity to admit our weaknesses or shortcomings. more so when we are constantly worried about how others may evaluate us. all the more bothersome to a teenager as this is the age they become obsessed with their appearance, go all out to look their best and dip into a depression if they fail to look good. it can reach even extreme levels of developing “body dysmorphic disorder” – a psychological disorder that requires counselling.
more abou this disorder in another post. thanks.
ruhi, i was able to add ur link in my post with the help of RK of “Rambling with Bellur”.
thanks, RK
Finally.. a honest post from a girl..cheers for that.. 🙂
there are no specification of beauty everything is man made.. its just how people perceive things.
yes beauty from outside attracts others at the first meet .. but quite frankly once u start moving with some body its the inner beauty that builds up a good rapport…
,girls are needlessly starving for maintaining so called “the perfect figure” ..yes its good to be slim and tight… but we should also accept how we are..rather than others accept how we are..thats how life could be beautiful and peaceful..
once again nice post …
kudos to you and ruhi..
aamod, that article on wiki was interesting. i did not know that the hip to waist ratio influences the cognitive ability of the developing foetus! smaller the ration, better the cognitive ability! all the more important that pregnant women do not hog and increase the HWR thus decreasing the intelligence of their about to be born kid!
arvind, accepting the differences and celebrating them peps up our life! but it is SOOOOOOOO hard to ACCEPT!
yeah … good things are always difficult to imply 😛
but they sure are fruitful..
🙂
Totally agree with Latha. Accepting our differences and being happy is all that matters, yet it is difficult to achieve this. 🙂
Latha, thanks for the trackback. The next time you need to add a link, just highlight the relevant words (using your mouse), and then click on the HTML icon (looks like a small chain) in your writing window –> copy the relevant URL in the window that pops up–> Click Insert–> Done 🙂 Isn’t that easy? Let me know if you have a prob
Agree with you on the obsession bit…
But it is equally true, that if you are happy, you are radiant and look beautiful and as far as a good body is concerned… I would attribute a not-so-good body to a bad lifestyle…
A good body can be achieved by a good lifestyle… The basic funda is to burn out whatever u eat and if you can do that only by crash diet… so be it!!
eat right. exercise right. and burn well. crash diets never burn well. you only reach ‘burn out’. when our body is used to certain pattern of diet, crash dieting deprives the body of this pattern so suddenly that body can not cope up with this sudden deprivation and the organs get insulted. it can lead to many complications. later on even if you get back to the normal pattern, body will not be able to hold that well and may dehydrate through vomiting and loose motions. when the body is thus insulted at a young age, later on it leads to many health problems at a much earlier age. hence please beware of crash dieting!
Thinking back to my high school years, I was constantly consumed with this image in my mind playing over and over dictating what I did and how I would act. I tried out for the basketball team as a freshman and made the team by the skin of my teeth. That entire season was hell for me. I was picked on so much for many different reasons but it all went back to the fact that I was this really tall, skinny kid and not as coordinated as the others. I tried to keep in mind that this was my first time ever playing the game and that I had been deprived of the fundamental years with sports that the rest had been active in. The entire negative feedback from players and coaches, whether jokingly or not, really took a toll on me during those awkward years of my life. Of course this was all just icing on the cake to the fact that I had just been taken away from my family and put in a foster home. I would often blow-off what people would say or what I could tell they were thinking, acting as though it didn’t faze me. You learn to tell yourself that it happens to everyone some time or another and just pretend you’re bulletproof. I guess I wasn’t though. I found myself striving to change what those people were saying about me. I changed my physique, my attitude and even my friends for the sake of being accepted in the eyes of people who now don’t matter a bit. Now days, I am very aware of my actions that show what kind of person I am. Not to say that I’m some kind of paranoid freak but it almost comes natural these days at the subconscious level to remind myself that I should act a certain way around a certain crowd. I believe in making “good first impressions”, so I try to present myself as a friendly, likable guy to everyone I meet. When I was a kid I would play outside with friends still wearing bits of my lunch on my face. It didn’t matter if I looked cool or attractive but now that has all changed. My body image is what I think about more than probably anything else. I have been heavily influenced as to how I should look by a number of things. I’ve been influenced by movies, commercials, magazines, friends, girlfriends and many other sources to make me believe that I have something to prove. Of course me being who I am, I take these ideas hook, line and sinker. I buy clothes that give me a certain look, choose habits that keep me in shape and purchase products that claim they’ll “make you better.” Like for instance, I could buy shampoo from dollar general for a buck or two but I opt to get the expensive stuff from a salon because I believe it does a better job. This isn’t necessarily wrong but it just goes to show how consumed people like me let themselves get with their own body image. It’s not completely our fault though we’re human. When something like shampoo is being promoted by a guy with washboard abs it just lures us in because we all want to look good. American society pushes so hard at body image that it’s becoming ridiculous. When we could be spending money on a life-saving cure, we find ourselves advertising underwear. Who doesn’t know that they should buy underwear honestly? We’re becoming too consumed with body image, wasting time caring so much about something that shouldn’t be at the top of our priorities list. This all has impacted my life and shaped the person people see me as today. Somewhere along the way I feel that I’ve probably missed out on things more important, like caring for others less fortunate than I. Spending extra money to make myself look good could have been used to help some person who has nothing get what they need just to survive. Things of this nature tend to make me question my actions but I try to not have any regrets.
dear cole, thanks for the visit and placing such an honest comment. certain degree of body image needs to be there for all of us so that we keep ourselves hale and healthy and presentable. but this image should not become an obsession. it tends to get obsessive during adolescence when all that an adolescent can think of is his/her body image. as you have rightly mentioned, each advertisement and celebrity endorsement influence the teenagers so much that there is a big industry thriving on this body image.
cole, you have made a very poignant statement – “Somewhere along the way I feel that I’ve probably missed out on things more important, like caring for others less fortunate than I. Spending extra money to make myself look good could have been used to help some person who has nothing to get what they need just to survive.” if only this thought gets translated into some meaningful action, we can wipe some tears and see some smiles on the faces of less fortunate ones!
thank you, cole.