The Emperor's New Clothes

In 1999, I wrote the following article, and you will note that we are just now addressing some of these issues:

It has troubled me in recent years to watch the lens of acceptability narrow to a point where most of the population is excluded. In this article, I want to target the weight issue facing our country.

First we had the thinning of America through target models who represent approximately 2% of the population. The impossibility for most people to fit into this standard of acceptability has been documented in studies of Anorexia and Bulimia. Recently, our neurosis as a nation was exported to the Fiji Islands through satellite television. The normally happy teenage population whose body type is plump by our standards suddenly developed eating disorders as the girls tried desperately to fit into the model of acceptability shown on television!

The other day on PBS radio, I heard a discussion between physicians regarding the inescapable findings that there is more obesity in the United States now than ever before. They are at a loss to understand what is causing the excess weight. Hormones in food was cited as a possibility, but I didn't hear the whole program, so don't know if they touched on the psychological factor.

When you feel that you cannot possibly meet a standard required for being "in", what are your options? Oftentimes a person will give up and move in the opposite direction or go on crash diets that cause major imbalances in the metabolism. The psyche is wounded by an impossible standard that is actually abnormal. Yet, because society dictates it as the way to be, many women feel they lack character because they cannot fit into size 4 or 6 clothing!

I woke up one morning and thought about how we have allowed ourselves to be duped by advertisers and some perverted view cooked up in a Madison Avenue office about what we should and should not look like, what our age should be, how we should dress, what cars we should drive, how much money we should make, etc. etc. And I looked at the television set and thought..."Who is in there?"

Why do we give that box so much power? It is nobody. It is a box. And the same goes for a magazine, or newspaper. They are pieces of paper with ink on them. Yet we have given them the power to sway our views and determine our status in life. Vehicles of information have become propaganda machines. We are being brainwashed as a nation...and unfortunately now that we have satellite TV...as a world.

I have one daughter who is naturally thin. Yet she will be hard on herself if she gains a few pounds. She is a size 6, for heaven's sake! Her sister has a different body type. She is not naturally that size, and has had eating disorders throughout most of her life in an attempt to fit that model of acceptability.

As I talked to the older one (size 6) and mentioned that we are molding our belief systems to adhere to someone else’s concept of what is attractive, I realized that we are playing out the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. If you recall, the Emperor was persuaded by a silver-tongued tailor that he had an outstanding new wardrobe when in fact he was wearing nothing. Not wanting to appear stupid, he agreed with the tailor about his stylish new clothes. His subjects all followed suit, and affirmed the magnificence of his new outfits until a child, in his innocence, cried out that the emperor had nothing on. When you really look at pictures of the models who represent the new desired look, they are barely beyond the hauntingly gaunt pictures of survivors from concentration camps after WWII. This is desirable?? By whose standard? By what measure? Where is the little child amongst us who shouts out that they look unhealthy?

As we let ourselves be molded by a jaded idea of beauty or acceptability, we are falling into a trap of becoming mindless followers. Whether  the issue is weight, or age, or our work, we need to stand up and say "NO" to an external imposition of what is right for us.

We need to champion who we are, what we do, and how WE view life. We need to be authentic and recharge ourselves with the knowledge that we are part of a beautiful bouquet of diversity in the life plan. We are not all the same for a reason. What a dull world this would be without differences. 

If we believe in the perfection of a Supreme Being, how can we ever allow Madison Avenue’s criteria for beauty and acceptability supersede the code of The One who created us?      
~ Food for Thought
KJ