Let’s say you’re temporarily fat.
You got wide this winter, summer’s coming, and the world’s ending. Right?
When we witness excess in any form, it’s usually a symptom of underlying turmoil in the human under its influence.
People who are perpetually too thin, too fat, too high, too drunk, whatever – generally aim to fill a pain void
#ExceptionsExistDuh
But you take someone like this who lost 170 pounds and that’s not just about “look hot naked” goals. Brooke the blogger, for example, has overcome a whole food addiction.
The more of your life you’ve spent consuming crap, the harder to change. When you finally opt to, like any addiction, it takes day-by-day resolve. At every sun up, she decided she’d eat right, commit to cardio, and eschew foods that’d only raise the scale numbers while lowering her self worth.
That’s really effing hard.
For two reasons. If you’ve been fat your whole life (and I dunno if she has) you don’t even know what you’re working toward. For once-skinny-who-let-themselves-go types, you know why you’re doing it.
The other biggie is that… well… it’s food. The thing you need to stay alive. You can’t just live off sunshine and well wishes. And if you’ve got the Pringle problem (“Once you pop, you can’t stop!” – whatever happened to that?) it can be difficult to distinguish anxious indulgence from satiation. That’s why when this betch lost that much weight and Shape said they’d run her story only to reject her “after” photo, I wasn’t surprised.
I was more annoyed at the confirmation of what I already understood magazines like this to do.
Per Buzzfeed:
When Brooke submitted this “after” photo of herself in a bikini, Shape insisted she send in another of herself in a tee. When Brooke asked why they wanted a different photo, she was told it was “policy” to show “Success Stories” in tees.
I have a theory. If it suddenly became a trend for our celebs to share their human aspects more regularly – stretch marks, skin flaps, or even the cellulite your vegan-diet-and-eight-days-a-week gym routine can’t even cure, the mags and product suppliers would eventually go outta bizz
With my tongue.
Cause to sell shit, you must create a sense of need.
They might rock a guise of loving the fit life with their great before and after transformations, but the reason they can’t show the chick with the skin apron is the same reason they’ll keep abusing that blur tool in post.
In reality, rapid fat loss often means skin aprons.
And your acceptance of reality doesn’t sell their magazine.
Thus reality acceptance must be banished to the basement of your brain and bound in chains of cognitive dissonance, supplanted with self hate seeds blooming into an imaginary sense of lack.
The moment women stop aiming for the impossible Platonic ideal portrayed by the “after” snaps (photoshopped beyond recognition) is the moment those same women’ll say: “That bitch in this magazine looks like me. And the celebrities I like look like me.”
And then it won’t be long before they say:
“Why would I need that cream in the ad on the next page… if I already look like all these women?”
No one’s going to look 20 forever. We’re human. We change. We age. And underneath those fillers and freezers we’ll be getting in somethingty-something years – we’re decaying. In the meantime, we try to enjoy the ride and strike equanimity to both look good and feel good. That way we can interact authentically in the world, unencumbered by identity insecurities.
But one woman who had to nix her identity altogether for job security is that freelance writer who ran the story – or didn’t run it, rather. She’s now operating under a pseudonym.
Shape blamed her for the decision to deny the chick’s pic, claiming the tee thing wasn’t their policy, as the writer had told Brooke (duh). And like any wise ex-employee who has a prayer of getting a good reference for their next gig, her on record comment was:
“I totally support what Shape says.”
Sure, she sounds like a hostage with her mouth on a receiver and a gun to her temple. But I ask you, fellow ovary porters:
Are we not saying the same if we knowingly subscribe to monthly fantasy fitness?