Hello my gorgeous ladies and gents! I'm back!
As many of you may have noticed, I've been absent from the blog-sphere for far too long! I was planning on just taking the semester off as I struggle to pass my required physics course (yuck!), but, as usual, I've stumbled across something that hit such a bad note with me, I just had to write about it!
And what is that "bad note," you might ask? Just a little article on AskMen.com, a website dedicated to giving all the dudes out there some guidance on how to "become a better man." Trust me, you're going to laugh when you see what kind of advice they're doling out.
The article in question is titled: "6 Ways to Tell Your Girl to Lose Some Weight".
Are you offended yet? Maybe you're sitting there thinking (like I was), "alright, this sounds bad, but maybe there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, it's not necessarily immoral for a boyfriend to be invested in his woman's health." Or something along those lines.
Well guess again, ladies! While Mr. Chris Lumsdon, the author of this masterpiece, has omitted any explicit reason as to why you would want your girlfriend to lose weight, the fact that many of his suggestions revolve around simply shaming your beloved into realizing she looks gross leads me to believe he has a little more than mere health concerns at heart.
By now you're probably wondering, what are these ways in which I should: ruin any sense of trust my girlfriend has placed in me/ set myself up for a gnarly kick to the groin/ tell my girlfriend she's getting fat? Well, dear readers, here they are: {In case you don't believe this, here's the original.}
1. Tell her her favorite outfit looks bad on her. If she doesn't look good in her "go-to getup," she'll realize she doesn't look good in anything! From there you can relax and "watch her forever skip the nachos and cheese."
2. Tell her YOU feel fat. "She'll become fat-obsessed by osmosis." (I'm not even making this up.)
3. Pick one of her not-so-skinny friends and announce that because she's fat, she's ugly. "She'll be thinking that if you find her bookworm buddy hefty, perhaps a diet should be on her docket."
4. Announce you have a hot new female trainer at the gym. She'll be so jealous she'll go the gym with you every time you go "just to keep an eye on you."
5. Buy her a piece of clothing that is obviously too small, and subtly announce that the sales clerk said it's only meant for "smaller women... she'll work morning, noon and night to fit into that cursed thing."
6. Tell her you want to lose weight together. This suggestion was the most reasonable of the bunch, until Mr. Lumsdon added that your girlfriend will be so overwhelmed to see that you're invested in her health (by worrying about the couple of pounds she gained over the holidays) that she'll go out of her way to spoil you and treat you and show you she's invested in you, too... I don't know about you ladies, but if my boyfriend told me I was looking a little "flabby," tickets to his favorite sports team would be the LAST thing he'd be getting!
I want to say I don't even have words for how I feel about this list, but the fact is, I have far too many! I could go on for days about how misogynistic, backward-thinking and offensive this is, but I'm going to try to keep it short: no man (or woman) in your life should ever, ever feel it's okay to shame you for the way you look, regardless of your weight, your shape, or any other aspect of your body. Women have been fat and skinny and short and tall and curvy and straight and everything in between for hundreds of years. Just because the media has decided that the way your body looks it "out" right now does not mean that it's "wrong."
Beauty has been coming in all forms before you, and it will continue to come in all forms long after you're gone. You are a beautiful woman exactly the way you are, and you should never give anybody the right to tell you any differently. It may be a cliche but it's true: never let anybody steal your happiness, and never let anybody dull your sparkle. You are wonderful and beautiful and amazing and incredible, and if someone around you doesn't see that, it's their loss. Even if you agree that you would like to make some changes to your body or your appearance, that's your choice to make. It should not be influenced by magazines or Victoria's Secret or, heaven forbid, a shitty dick-head boyfriend who happens to think you would look more do-able with a flatter stomach. It is your right to stop worrying about your extra little jiggles here and there, learn to love your body and learn to love the way it lets you enjoy life! And you should never let anybody ever convince you of anything different.
P.S.: There is an awesome bright side I forgot to mention: of the 500 men who read this article online and chose to participate in a poll, more than 50% of them voted that the "tips" the author doles out make them either "sad" or "furious." Further, only 13% claimed it helped make them a "better man." So just take heart that, for every total jerk out there who is judging you by the size of your jeans, there's a whole other guy who is digging your self-acceptance, and would never ask you to change! Now that sounds like the world I want to live in!
