Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Do My Thighs Look Fat? Yours Don't!

     Women are crazy human beings sometimes.  I have heard men say this all the time, and it used to go in one ear and out the other.  As I creep into my mid-thirties however, I have experienced enough of life now to know that men are not that far off by saying that!  Men are fairly simple creatures where most of the time what you see is what you get.  They are single-minded thinkers who don't spend a great deal of time ruminating over things that they cannot control.  They don't spend an hour in front of the mirror deciding what to wear.  They don't wonder if their thighs always look fat.  They don't hang with their bestie because he looks like he just jumped out of the latest Ralph Lauren ad.  And they DON'T bond over their body parts!  (Well....I guess they do with SOME body parts. Ha!)
     I, myself, am one of those rare species of a woman who has the brain chemistry of a man.  Unlike many women, I don't have a lot of female friends.  I truly believe that has a great deal to do with my personality and my lifestyle.  I'm a blunt, straight-to-the-point kind of gal who doesn't like to sit around and talk about my problems when I could be going out and trying to find a solution to them.  I tend to take issues I might be dealing with to my husband, in particular, because he loves to come up with solutions and tailors them to me in a way that works with my personality which I am always grateful for.  I hate it when women gripe about being fat, but have never set foot inside a gym or consumed a fruit/vegetable.  (Are you getting my blunt, straight-to-the-point drift yet?)
     So, back to the topic of body parts.  Here's what baffles me to no end....Why do women bond over being fat??  Whether I'm in a store, at work, or even at Starbucks, there is always some sort of "competition" going down about who has the most jiggly arms or who can mash the most cellulite between their hands!  Really, ladies??  Aren't there other things in life besides the size of our thighs?
     I recently came across a blog called 'THE MODERN COUGAR' that made some excellent points about how we women bond over negativity because it helps us form a connection, albeit, not a healthy one.  Women are likely to engage in behavior that mirrors their female friends because fitting in and being accepted is basically part of a woman's anatomy.  It's how women have been taught to interact.  We have also been taught that a woman who looks better than we do or that feels happy with herself is the enemy and a substantial form of competition.
     There has also been a lot of negativity in the media lately about a former plus-sized model named Chrystal Renn who recently changed her lifestyle habits and lost some weight.  Granted, she is now a healthy size 6-8 and not a zero like everyone is making her out to be.  Many curvier women looked up to her because they could relate to her seemingly soft, rounder figure that MIRRORED theirs.  (Does that phrase sound familiar from above?)  Now they feel like they have no one to emulate.  Ladies, it's time we stop looking to celebrities and magazines for role models and start finding ways to be the best looking females that WE can be!  If you don't have the genetics to be a fitness model, and you want to look like one, be prepared for a long road to travel.  That girl you know at work that works out religiously?.....Bring her aside one day and ask her what her secrets are!  Stop looking at her in a negative light because she has the discipline and willpower level that you spend so much time talking yourself out of!  Once you start looking INWARD at the mental cobwebs that are clouding up your thinking, in regards to your own body, you will start to focus more on what YOU need to do to stop competing with other women.  Women with high self esteem tend to stand alone because they are too busy making stuff happen in their life to sit around talking about what they wish they could do.  These women stand alone because they are the exception, not the rule.  Isn't it about time that you stood alongside them?

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