Change isn't Always Needed
Pete Schaff
Issue date: 12/21/08 Section: Impact Staff Blogs
Feb. 8 - I see it everyday in the grocery store where I work, in people's faces I don't know, the commercials on TV. Change how you look, change your body, be thin, be beautiful. The message is always the same. "You're not good enough as you are now, so change it."
Plastic surgery, dieting, pills, facial treatments, and expensive bull all designed to change the outer you into something else and I just don't get it.
Is it an escape? A way out? Some form of social statement to say that you're a different person now even though on the inside everything is still the same? Maybe it's about confidence. People feeling that they are ugly and fat and don't have the self-assurance to go out and talk and be themselves without changing their outer shells.
I understand these reasons and for the longest time I thought them too. I am a large man and I understand what its like to feel unconfident and fat and out of place in a society that glorifies the lithe and muscular and attractive. I even went and did have plastic surgery to fix something I felt was wrong with me. It took awhile but only after the surgery did I realize that I was wrong and none of that was the answer. Not invasive surgery or pills or dangerous dieting (all of which I had tried). I just had to be myself, take the inside and put it out for everyone to see. It took time and oftentimes I felt mortified and felt like going back and trying out the surgeries and diets advertised in the magazines and television ads. But with the struggle of trying to externalize the internal comes more self-awareness and with that I was able to get over my self image and society's image of me.
I know this may sound like a lot of psycho babble, and some of you may have even heard this before from some counselor or psychologist but it works, a lot better than surgery that can leave scars or diets that won't work. And even better once you know yourself and can project that self onto the world you can make conscious choices to change your body through healthy choices. I've started to lose weight recently but I had to accept myself first. Because without that crucial step, you will never have what you want, be it a lean trim body or in my own case happiness.
Plastic surgery, dieting, pills, facial treatments, and expensive bull all designed to change the outer you into something else and I just don't get it.
Is it an escape? A way out? Some form of social statement to say that you're a different person now even though on the inside everything is still the same? Maybe it's about confidence. People feeling that they are ugly and fat and don't have the self-assurance to go out and talk and be themselves without changing their outer shells.
I understand these reasons and for the longest time I thought them too. I am a large man and I understand what its like to feel unconfident and fat and out of place in a society that glorifies the lithe and muscular and attractive. I even went and did have plastic surgery to fix something I felt was wrong with me. It took awhile but only after the surgery did I realize that I was wrong and none of that was the answer. Not invasive surgery or pills or dangerous dieting (all of which I had tried). I just had to be myself, take the inside and put it out for everyone to see. It took time and oftentimes I felt mortified and felt like going back and trying out the surgeries and diets advertised in the magazines and television ads. But with the struggle of trying to externalize the internal comes more self-awareness and with that I was able to get over my self image and society's image of me.
I know this may sound like a lot of psycho babble, and some of you may have even heard this before from some counselor or psychologist but it works, a lot better than surgery that can leave scars or diets that won't work. And even better once you know yourself and can project that self onto the world you can make conscious choices to change your body through healthy choices. I've started to lose weight recently but I had to accept myself first. Because without that crucial step, you will never have what you want, be it a lean trim body or in my own case happiness.
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