Friday, January 25, 2008

"Let's Put the 'U' back in 'Beauty'!"

Yes, that was one of the cheesy quotes that I heard tonight on a reality show called "How to Look Good Naked." (And I do *not* mean "cheesy" in a warm, melty, mouth-wateringly good way.)

The premise of the show seems to be to they take a woman who has a bad body image, give her a make-over, and -- viola! -- cure all her body image woes.

Yeah, right.

So they (and the "they" in this case is mostly just host Carson Kressley of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" fame) cure a woman's bad self-esteem about her looks by, um, changing her looks? Not sure that's the way it works in real life, folks.

Anyway, the most interesting part of the show for me is when they have the subject choose where she thinks she fits into a lineup of ladies in order of size. The subjects invariably think that they are larger than they really are.

That part, at least, hit home for me because I do think that I sometimes feel larger than I am. On days when I have eaten more than intended or exercised less, I feel very blob-ish, no matter what the scale says.

The other day, I was pigging out at lunch at work with some coworkers. I was *not* feeling very slim. But as I was walking away from the table, I overheard one coworker comment to another that I was "so small."

Now, I'm not, really...but it sure gave me a different perspective to hear that. 124 pounds is large compared to where I want to be, weight-wise, but it is "so small" compared to the U.S. average for my height. (See US Government Height/Weight Stats It is also "so small" compared to what I once weighed. So I guess I should put it in perspective and feel better about it.

This perspective business is quite the balancing act: feeling good enough about my weight to be have a decent body image, but not so good that I forget to strive to be better. Yikes. If I find the answer to that puzzler, I'll sure let you know! It is not as simple in reality as it seems on a reality show.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that my scale lies to me. In the morning it sometimes says 116 and sometimes it's closer to 120. Last night while waiting for my wash, I tried on a bathing suit at a store...and OMG I thought what the fuck, that looks horrible. Then I go back to the laundry mat to dry my clothes and I read this article. It was about this Indian lady who was always told that she was too skinny and was considered tall, but when she came to America she was short and pudgy. Maybe we should move to another country to "look good naked".

Joe Leydon said...

Everybody fears they look bad while naked. Everybody.

ThinMe said...

Oh? Then how do you explain the large middle-aged European men who wear speedos at the beach? ;-)