Outcry

I was at the supermarket this evening with my mother, and upon walking into the check-out line, I was bombarded with unflattering pictures of actresses and actors that probably have enough on their minds without nasty paparazzi photos -- AND I was also hit from all sides by "Ways to lose weight!" "Melt that fat!" "Get your bikini body!" "Find out about the calories you could be cutting!" "Trim that belly!"

-----it made me furious. To think -- to honestly think about what that kind of advertising, those kinds of put-downs are doing to so many young girls in our country, in our world -- and probably boys, too (though for them, the pressure is to have a big penis and to have muscles, not just to be as thin as a twig). -- it makes me so mad. It's also frustrating because it's not really something that I can change about our culture as a whole. Sure, I can try to undo all the brainwashing in my mind that has accumulated over the years that tells me that thin is always better than fat, that being normal sized is basically being fat, that--that somehow this punishing society of ours is right.

I do need to try and fight that, but I wish I could fight it on a larger scale.