Tuesday 12 June 2007

the banes of my life.

Yes, I abandoned my rantings again, although quite honestly I wasn't aware that it had been over a month. There just aren't enough hours in the day for all the things that I want to do in life - my head is filled with ideas for projects and lists of books to read, films to watch, things to explore, people I want to get to know - and on top of that there are the mundane necessities of life that require seemingly constant attention.

I do so wish that I didn't have to have a job - this isn't because I'm bone idle, quite the opposite. I resent so much of my life being eaten away by a job that doesn't interest me enough to justify the amount of time it occupies; and I resent the emphasis our society puts upon earning money. The purpose of life is not to earn as much money as possible, it is to enjoy, to explore, to express and create.

"Why not find a job that combines your interests with the (unfortunate?) necessity of earning a living?", I hear you ask. There aren't any jobs that will allow me to do that - a job means being enslaved to an employer, doing things they want in a place they want you to be, when they tell you to. In my mind a job means doing something I don't want to do in a place I don't want to be. So I will beaver away at my little projects and hope one day that something will come of them.

On another note, I am sick and tired of being told I should lose weight. Not personally, of course, but indirectly by way of the media. The hypocrisy that they churn out grows ever more ridiculous - now that a backlash has begun over Size Zero women are constantly reminded that we should be a "healthy size" - a fair enough idea, in theory. In practice however this "healthy size" propogated by the media and people in it is a meagre size 8 or 10 - not a healthy weight for many women! I am a size 12/14, either overweight or almost there depending on who you ask, and perfectly healthy. A size 8 may be healthy for some, but for most it is still too thin.

The media need to realise that the "healthy" ideal doeasn't have to mean slim and healthy. I
recently read an interview with an actress who claimed she was now healthy, having "slimmed" (in other words, starved) from a size 14 to an 8; that she hated the craze for unrealistic super-skinniness and that at her current size could still have "the occasional takeaway" providing she "spent 3 hours at the gym the next day". That isn't healthy behaviour, that is trying to burn away everything you eat and thinking of food as an enemy that has to be worked off and out of your body. It is downright hypcritical to condemn Size Zero in one sentence and then talk about a strict diet and exercise regime in the next.

I am not advocating that we all eat nothing but junk food and sit around on our backsides all day. I am simply trying to highlight the twisted view the media presents of the "ideal woman" even when it claims it is being realistic. Eat fruit and veg, exercise, try not to eat 1kg of chcocolate a day; but don't make it an obsession. Sensible and realistic isn't exercising away every extra calorie or having one treat a week, it's realising food is one of life's pleasures and that there are far more interesting things to focus on than diet.

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