dieting industry statistics
Is it possible to change the Fabric of our Society?
Women are constantly being told to look a certain way. Look at all the cosmetic surgeries. Look at the beauty and youth industry in general.
I’ve heard some interesting statistics:
The average girl in the United States begins dieting at Age 8.
Girls report having body image issues at an average of Age 5.
Here is my question:
How do we change society itself? What measures should be taken?
Society changes all the time. Just a few generations ago a hanging was considered good family fun in this country.
As for women dieting, and your starting to see it in men too now. Plain and simple people look better when thin. How thin is thin enough to look good varies by who is looking and the the shape/bone structure/muscle type of the person being viewed. With fewer men doing taking part in sports, working labor intensive jobs and overall just not getting out much your starting to see males dieting also.
As for changing the culture unless you can rewire our brains to see beauty differently it’s not going to happen. Nor is it any healthier to not diet. On one side you have the various detrimental effects of extreme diets including anorexia, poor nutrition, anemia, etc. On the flip side those who just let themselves go suffer from diabetes, heart disease, poor mental health, back pain, higher rates of cancer, and so on.
In short being at either extreme is unhealthy for MOST people, but not all. The one thing nutritionists are completely missing is that people are different. What is good for one person is lethal for another. They are trying to slap a single model and force feed everybody into it. No wonder half the time they are reversing themselves or contradicting previous findings. For some people extremely thin is both normal and healthy. For some people it’s lethal. Some people can weigh in at 300 LBs and live for years with few health issues, most people cannot. For some it’s a crippling experience they cannot recover from.
Where you’ll have better luck is instilling healthier habits earlier than 8. Everybody should “diet” it’s just a matter of their phsyiology, goals and easily obtained foods. A weight lifter “diets” but their goal is not to lose weight it’s to bulk up. Almost nobody looks good or feels good even 20 lbs over their ideal weight. By waiting until they are 15 or 16 to try to diet they are already set in really bad eating habits which haunt them their entire life.
As for how attractive a woman is that is hard wired. Dudes are very visually oriented in that way. As long as we are a mixed gender society women will be judged by how they look to a lessor or greater extent. Short of wiping out our reproductive instincts you won’t even dent that. Even if you manage to control one of our strongest instincts and bury it. The way men and women’s brains work will place a heavier emphasis on looks when it comes to women.
So in short your barking up not only the wrong tree, your barking at a telephone pole cause you missed the forest on this one. To change what your trying to change would steal from humanity those things that make us so volatile and thus so unique. Those instincts and drives that have launched fleets, changed history over and over again and what has led to the happy union of so many humans over the ages. Remove it and we become some bland species of walking plants. I would suggest asking instead how can we safely help people manage diets for their goals and create realistic goals/ideals.