BODY IMAGE - Get Real

The Government runs something called The Positive Body Image Awards – fairly self-explanatory. All you have to do to be nominated is hire one plus-size model for one promotion during the year (Or, for fashion houses or department stores, carry plus-sized clothing).

            It’s been moderately successful. Some high-end designers and major clothing chains have been nominated. Even the women’s magazines are coming on-board – led, admittedly, by the staid old Women’s Weekly. And the only hold-out? (Sharp intake of breath): The advertising industry. Is any more proof needed that advertising is evil?

            I’m being facetious. Advertising is only the devil on our shoulder, whispering in our ear. No salesman can trick us into paying for something we don’t want. No commercial can sell us something we don’t desire. They can, however, lie about just what it is we’re buying. And what, in the end, do we always believe we’ll get when we swipe that plastic? Why, happiness of course. The bill comes later.

            The advertising executives know us. They spend a lot of time and money studying our ways. If they’re selling us the body image lie it’s because they know we think we’ll be happy buying it.

            Body dysmorphia: the scientific name for when you can’t relate the figure in the mirror to the one you see in your head. It’s why anorexics and bulimics keep wasting when they’re already skeletal; they genuinely see themselves as fat. It works the other way too. Since the advent in the media of positive body image campaigns, people who, for health reasons, could afford to lose a few kilos now delude themselves they’re “curvy” or “husky”. There’s a big difference between “curvy” and obese.

            It’s unclear whether dysmorphia leads to anxiety and depression or vice-versa. It’s a complex issue, and it wasn’t invented by the advertising industry ­– they just nurture it for financial gain.

            This inability to see reality isn’t limited to weight. I know a beautiful woman. No, I mean true, spectacular, exotic beauty; the kind that turns heads everywhere she goes – to the extent that it sometimes makes her paranoid. For as long as I’ve known her this lady has expressed insecurity about the size of her breasts, and a desire to have them augmented.

            Now, there’s nothing wrong with her breasts; they’re perfect. I know, I’ve seen them. In fact, recently someone asked me why he hadn’t seen us together in a while and, unable to remember her name, described her as “the stacked one”. I could tell her this story, but it wouldn’t stop her racing-off to have dangerous, unnecessary surgery. No amount of objective reality can alter the insane ideal she carries in her head.

            More and more, men also are affected by this stuff. You can’t buy a carton of milk anymore without seeing some pituitary-freak grinning at you over a headline proclaiming that, in six weeks, you too can look like a stocking full of footballs.

            My sister’s boyfriend has a teenage son. He spends all his free time at the gym, hanging out with the type of goon who introduced the phrase, “You ‘mirin’, brah?” to the language. The boy is huge. Not long ago he was rushed to hospital in the middle of the night, screaming and clutching his abdomen; his growing body couldn’t support the strain he was putting on it. Soon after being released he was back in the gym.

            If we keep buying it, they’ll keep selling it. We need to get real. Once we do that, the media will respond. To keep making money, they’ll have to. Have a look in the mirror – or, better yet, get some objective evidence; a tape-measure, some scales and a BMI chart. If what you find is unhealthily skinny, stop exercising for a while and eat some more; if you’re too big, admit it to yourself and do something about it. But get real.

            More than that, accept yourself – your true, best self. Don’t buy into a fantastic ideal. Fake tits or the world’s biggest pecs won’t make you happy, but they may just do you lasting damage. Even if they don’t, you’ll soon be looking for something else to fill that hole.

            Me, when I train – the little I can these days if I don’t wish to vanish completely from sight – I don’t think of becoming Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think in terms of proportion, efficiency and functionality. By proportion, I mean in a human sense; a Greco-Roman statue, not something out of a video-game or graphic novel; a healthy body functioning efficiently within its own limitations. The kind of physique you used to see on fighters before fighters had to look like underwear models, and underwear models had to look like body-builders.

            Nature seems to have decreed – for the moment, at least – that I can have either a six-pack or an ass, but not both. That being the case, in the interest of health and getting real, I can live with the four-pack above the quarter-inch of belly-fat. No, really, I can ...