The Ideal Body

The world has given us an image and an ideal of a perfect body. Whether it's male or female, the perfect body is slender, toned, tanned, and fashionably dressed. The proud owner of the perfect body is, by necessity, well off financially, has impecable style and taste, and generally starves themselves into this perfect state of being.

The rest of society sits back in great admiration and envy of their accomplishments.

This whole attitude is killing us.

It kills us physically and it kills us spiritually and psychologically.

We humans start our lives as helpless, chubby beings whose basic function is to eat and get strong enough to grow, develop, and build the motor skills necessary to function as adults. Various children will develop into various adults - some tall, some short, some thin, some not. Some will attain wealth and power, others will struggle to survive.

Somewhere along this continuum, if society has its way, we lose tolerance for variety. A prototype is established and almost everyone will come to feel inadequate when measured against the ideal.

Life is short, uncertain, and not always a bed of roses! It's time to get over the obsession with thinness and beauty that is sucking the very marrow out of the souls of so many.

It's not just youth that falls victim. Middle aged people are running in droves to the plastic surgeon. Cosmetic dentistry is a huge industry. Go to your local bookstore and count the number of diet books, self-help books, body-building books, etc. Be sure to take your calculator for that one.

Stop and take a look at the toll this obsession is taking on society. Apparently it is no longer possible to be too thin - just look at the covers of every gossip magazine in the check out line.

We need new role models in society. No - we need new criteria for measuring greatness in the people we admire. Physical features should be stricken from the list.