Whoever Dances is One with the Universe

Soooo at my one client's house the t.v. was on, and there was an ad going for some weight-loss programme. It started out fairly inoffensively: middle-aged, stocky woman going "yay now I am not quite as heavy I can do more!" which is a reasonable approach, really; and the fact that she wasn't skinny made it seem much more like a "I'm just wanting to be healthier, this isn't about the beauty standard" kind of thing. So far so good.

And then the last line of the commercial is her saying "Thank you [name of product] for letting me be pretty one last time".

What. the actual fuck.

So yeah, I thought you all might like to know what's wrong with the world.

Here's something that annoys me:

An excerpt from my psychology textbook regarding context-judgement.

Context effects also extend beyond immediate perceptions, across a wide range of events. For example, people generally define their own social and physical characteristics by comparing themselves with others. Often without realising they are doing it, many women compare themselves with the highly attractive and ultra-thin models in advertising. Since the viewers cannot match the perfect, air-brushed images they encounter, they experience negative feelings (e.g., Bower, 2001). If viewers are prone to making immediate comparisons, their moods become more negative, and they feel more dissatisfied with their own bodies (Tiggermann & McGill, 2004). One study found that when male and female college students viewed beautiful models, they rated photos of more average-looking people as less attractive than did a similar group of college students who did not see the models' photos (Kenrick, Montello, Gutierres, & Trost, 1993).

So far this makes sense and is fairly typical, if awful. Note that people actually think other people aren't as pretty after they've seen models. Which is >_>. But. Here's where I have a problem.

Thus women prone to feeling bad about themselves after seeing advertisements with seemingly-perfect models could stop reading magazines that carry such advertisements, or they could continue to read the magazines but remind themselves that these models set unattainable standards that do not apply to real people. [1]

Whut. I am extremely bothered that the answer to "advertising kills self-esteem" is "stop reading magazines you enjoy that have advertising" or "just try to feel better about yourself". NO. The answer is "make advertising change". That's like saying "murder kills people" so "stop being around people who murder people" "just try to feel less murdered" instead of "stop murdering". IDK it just seems so much like trying to hide the problem instead of dealing with it. I AM ANNOYED.

This is incoherent because I am also a teensy bit high, but I really am annoyed and I think that this is the kind of thinking that enables advertising to continue being full of douches and crushed female egos. So you know.

[1] Psychological Science, Michael Gazzaniga, Todd Heatherton, and Diane Halpern, 2010.

Natter:

Item one: I was looking through old photo albums to-day, and observed that my hair used to be so damn long and luxurious. >_> Actually, it was so heavy that the hair on my head was always really straight and flat, and the hair coming down was always incredible curly and thick, so I basically looked like I had the world's worst clip-on extensions. Anyway, now it's short and easy to take care of and curly everywhere, but damn it did look nice. I also note that I used to look an awful lot like a German butterball potato with a head on it, which is not to say that I'm not still fat, but at least I am no longer spherical.

Item two: There is a roving coffee van in Newport called He-Brews which serves hot coffee and foods to vagrants in the name of Christ. We started discussing other religiously-themed food organisations, and Maria came up with Beelzepub, which I think may be the most amazing thing ever. Also, since Beelzebub is the patron demon of gluttony, it double-works.

Item three: Three very foolish youths in the Shermans Dale area attempted to rob a liquor store that has already been robbed twice--the first time, the owner shot and killed the thief. You would think that anyone with a basic sense of self-preservation or the brains to conceive of committing a robbery in the first place would think that it was a bad idea to rob a place made famous a mere five months earlier for zealous protection (the owner did, admittedly, kill the first thief in self-defence, as the dude was attempting to hit him with a hammer--also unbelievably stupid, since the sentence for robbing a liquor store is around two years, unlike, say, a murder sentence).

Item four: It's the ninetieth anniversary of women getting the right to vote! You should celebrate by burning Sarah Palin in effigy.

Just discovered this facebook group about my school.

Most of the items are in extremely questionable taste, but the one I find particularly interesting is the fact that he repeatedly complains about his inability to get laid here, stating that all the parties are "sausage fest[s]" and "Ladies stop coming to parties to dance with each other there is plenty of eligible sausage standing on the wall as long as he doesn’t smell dance with him". I dunno, man, maybe it's the rampant grossosity and sexism of that statement that's keeping you sex-less.

See also (all quotations [sic]): "22 Why did former NFL figure Chuck Knox donate 500,000 to the history department and not to the football team? What the fuck could the history department possibly do with it?" HA HA HA HA HA HA.

"14 I know life is supposed to be a meritocracy but how is it possible that the jocks aren’t the coolest kids in the school?" Go to hell.

"39 Speaking of parties…. Are those sweatpants? Can you please go back to your room and put on something decent please I’m wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt, cologne, and some prada shoes you can at least put on a blouse ." This does not make me think you're suave or classy. It makes me think you're a douchebag.

"32 Why can’t freshmen park in the east parking lot even if they live in east?
Maybe Kevin’s hummer wouldn’t have got trashed if he didn’t have to park it in Kansas." Maybe he shouldn't be a freshman with a fucking Hummer.

"50 For the love of god what is with the attendance policies?
We pay our fucking money to go here if we can past your test and not go to class so what. I was supposed to get a B in two classes but got a C in both because of attendamnce.!!!" I lol'd.

In conclusion: Wow. I knew some of the people who went here were assholes, but this really drives it home.

I am dealing with two things right now; one is really annoying and the other is probably a good thing. So. I will make navel-gazing livejournal posts.

First of all, I am currently holding the position of being one of the only religious people in my group of friends. For the most part this isn't a problem. I am not the kind of Christian who has an interest in the conversion of others, and in general my friends are not the kind of people who look down on Christians. But--and this is the thing that is really frustrating me--we do not appear to have established that just because I find some religious humour humourous I will not get offended if people make offencive religious jokes.

I mean, I don't want to seem humourless and unable to deal with the issues inherent in my religion. But there are jokes that are funny and there are jokes that are outright upsetting to me, and a couple of my friends are apparently neither able to make that distinction nor to read my body language and interpret from it that I am not finding the situation funny. It's really awkward, too, because I don't want to get up in anybody's face and say "Hey, excuse me, that's not funny to me," but I also don't feel comfortable listening to some of this stuff. And God knows I have tried just leaving the table, but, again, apparently my body language is not clear enough, because these same people are not making that connexion.

Moreover, beyond humour, I am dealing with the fact that a lot of people are kind of bringing their grievances with Christianity to me (I think as a combination of my being religion and having a Judeo-Christian religious major [for anybody who's not aware, I changed my major to pre-seminary last semester!]), and expecting me to answer bigtime philosophical and religious questions and discrepancies within Christianity, and then having one of two reactions: either reacting as if my explanation is not good enough and as if, since my explanation isn't good enough, I should accept the inherent pointlessness of my religion and admit that it is stupid; or immediately countering all my explanations with Biblical studies that I already know about and treating me as though I know nothing about religion despite the fact that it is, you know, my major.

I haven't hit anybody yet, but I am starting to get really, really twitchy.

(And this isn't even touching on the people--not friends, luckily--who have expressed the opinion that because I am Christian and hope to be a priest at some future point, I am obligated to hate gay people, liberal people, minority groups, and sex, and also that it is not possible for me to secretary of the gay/straight alliance here on campus [which I am] or to believe in scientific theories like evolution [which I do], and that it is funny to make offencive religious comments solely to be offencive, which isn't actually offencive to me because I am not invested in them. >_> The reason it bothers me when my friends do it is because they're my friends.)

The other thing that I want to navelgaze about is ( going under a cut for ED triggers )

Also also: I managed to find a temporary therapist until mine comes back. She seems nice. We have our first meeting Tuesday. She got my name right on the first try! Best of all, she is FREE. Ha ha ha.

Also also also, I bought myself a Bruce Springsteen CD. It was only five dollars! >_>

Really cool post by spuffyduds:

[T]he other day at the library I was shelving a recent People Magazine, and there was an article about Jennifer Garner's post-baby weight loss titled, "How She Got Her Body Back."

...

What weird, weird phrasing, if you think about it. What a weird thought process it elucidates. "If my body deviates from a narrow ideal, or if it deviates from how I have grown used to it looking--it ain't mine anymore. I UNOWN IT! NOT MINE NOT MINE NOT MINE. My REAL body is AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE. It is MUCH CUTER than this thing which is currently inexplicably HANGING OFF MY NECK."

Hey, writers for People! That rounder, curvier body that Jennifer Garner had for a while? It was still HERS. It was still her.

That--is brilliant. ♥

Well this is just awful.

I am sitting in the Philadelphia train station right now, barely conscious because I took my medicine on the train and slept three hours, and it's almost five o'clock. (I'll be home in two hours! Well, three, counting the drive, but at least I'll be with my family in two.) I really don't like travelling.

Anyway, you should all check out this post by holyschist, which contains a ton of good links for IBARW and on feminism and beauty and some other topics. I didn't get around to doing anything for IBARW because I was in Massachusetts, but maybe I will get something belated up some time this week.

I am the only person in the train station carrying a giant purple and gold paper flower! :D So there's that. And I'm sitting right in front of my gate dammit with my flower and my computer, BECAUSE I CAN. I love Philly station and its smallness (almost as much as I love mhari). There was a nearly-full moon outside my window all the way here from Westwood; it was cheese-yellow and sat there for me all night long.