I’m mad as hell, and I’m running to catch up!

I feel like I’m a bit behind the boat on this rant. There probably won’t be much new ground to cover, but it’s been bugging the living crap out of me for a while now. I just want to say:

What the hell society?

What the fucking hell?!?

Yes I know the beauty myth and unreasonable expectations of physical perfection aren’t exactly news; and I’ve always known at least in principle that these things affect a huge proportion of people (if I were to put a number to it I’d guess at about 100%). But my knowledge of this was always a little academic. Perhaps it comes from talking the talk too much, but I’d somehow managed to give myself the impression that because everyone talks so venomously about society’s unrealistic expectations that we had collectively chosen to ignore them.

But the chink in the armour was already there in my own self-image. I’ve always been overweight, and had (possibly) related feelings of guilt, shame and general unworthiness. But that was ok, because I was fat. I mean distorted body images happened to normal people right? In my case it was justified. But everyone else, all the good-looking people, they looked at the ripped bodies and skinny waists on posters and laughed at the foolishness of it all right?

I was wrong. I was wrong in a way that’s only really become clear to me in the last year or so of talking to people and realising how insidious, how pervasive this crippling idea of physical imperfection is.

I don’t have any answers, but I think I can see the real scale of the problem now at least.

I’m way behind on this one, but that’s ok. I’m mad as hell! And I’m running to catch up!