Just Bananas - Doing Anything for that Perfect Body

While I was at the gym today I got quite mad. The two women next to me were talking about the new method they had read on the internet to lose lots of weight in a short period of time. I need not tell what diet that was, just look up "fad diet" in any search engine and you can get your own few hundred pages of entries. Just pick one to make fun of. Really, though, I can't blame them.

Trying to escape from what society views as the optimum body would entail never looking at a magazine, newspaper, most websites, billboard ads, catalogs, television and movies. (That would be asking way too much.) It is culturally acceptable to impose this ideal body upon the whole of the society, and most of society agrees with this. And whether or not they find that societal ideal to be what they find attractive that doesn't hinder most from trying to attain it. There is a wonder pill, fad diet, new workout, and a new gym wherever we turn. Lucky us. And if we cannot attain this body through "hard work" then there is always a surgeon out there who is willing to take a little off there, and add a bit more here. I need not go through the plethora of fad diets that we all have seen. They have all been, to some degree, disturbing. Whether it was the scientific "research" they based the diets on, the new theory, the case studies, or biological factor newly discovered, almost all were fads. What scares me more than the proposed fad diets is the people who try them. I completely understand this need to lose weight and have the quintessential body, but to what end? If there was truly a revolutionary new drug, as the ads say, don't you think it would be shown somewhere with more credibility. As in most cases, if it's too good to be true , it's probably not true. I am not saying that no effort should be made to lose weight, or that any system or diet out there doesn't work. I would just like to caution those pill-poppers and those who can only eat bananas for a week.

This drive that seems to consume most of the public says a lot about our society. I see more ads to get fit fast than I do for, what I consider, more pressing matters. The emphasis on looks overwhelms our dedication to our education, our family, our environment. I would love to preach how I believe looks aren't everything, and they aren't, but that would be ignored. Changing mass consciousness isn't as easy as it sounds. And I'm not willing to take the Hitler approach. I really am just ranting to wish most people were more careful in their quest for perfection.

Now excuse me from writing. It's time to go back to the gym.