AN ACTRESS SPEAKS OUT
About the unrealistic expectations many in this society have concerning women and their body image--see what she has to say:
"Actress Rosario Dawson has some pointed words about expectations on women and their bodies.
"It's a form of violence in the way that we look at women and the way we expect them to look and be for what sake? Not for health, survival, not for enjoyment of life, but just so you could look pretty," Dawson told Shape Magazine.
Dawson who appears on the August cover discussed industry-wide pressures to maintain an ideal body type.  After losing weight to play a drug addict dying of HIV/AIDS in the 2005 film "Rent," she was stunned to hear compliments about her  figure. “I remember everyone asking what did you do to get so thin? You looked great,” Dawson recalled. “I looked emaciated.”
The controversies surrounding the pressure to be too thin and constant airbrushing of photos are nothing new.
“I’m constantly telling girls all the time everything is airbrushed, everything is retouched to the point it’s not even asked,” she told the magazine.  “None of us look like that."
In the competitive world of magazine covers, skin is nipped, blemishes erased and waist trimmed.  Photoshopping models and celebrities for ultra svelte bodies became a huge topic in France in 2009 when a politician proposed a law that require altered advertisement photographs to carry a label.
This year, the American Medical Association adopted a policy during its annual meeting warning that photo alteration of models’ bodies “can contribute to unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image – especially among impressionable children and adolescents.
“A large body of literature links exposure to media-propagated images of unrealistic body image to eating disorders and other child and adolescent health problems,” according to the AMA.
The group called on advertising associations to discourage altering photos that could promote unrealistic expectations of body image.
From glossy fashion magazines to even health and fitness routinely retouch photographs.  Is it contradictory that fitness magazines that preach healthy lifestyle retouch their models or celebrities’ photos to look skinnier?"

Amen.  What really struck me is how Ms. Dawson got almost dangerously thin for that part she was playing in "Rent"--she looked "emaciated", as she put it--and yet everyone congratulated her on how thin she was.

There's a line to walk here, of course.  We can't just let ourselves go and be content with looking like slobs.  We need to take pride in our appearance, and there are things everyone can do, even those with physical differences, to look good.  But I continue to be glad that there is occasional push-back in this society against the obsession Hollywood and others have with the ultra-thin, perfect-looks model type, which is leading to eating disorders and an obsession with surface looks rather than true beauty, both inside and out.

AND BY THE WAY--DON'T STOP WORRYING; JUST POSTPONE IT
So says a new Dutch study--check it out:
"For those concerned with shedding some of their anxieties, it seems planning a certain time every day to worry may help stop the stress-out cycle.
When people with adjustment disorders, burnout or severe work problems used techniques to confine their worrying a single, scheduled 30- minute period each day, they were better able to cope with their problems, a new study by researchers in the Netherlands finds.
The study made use of a technique, called "stimulus control," that researchers have studied for almost 30 years. By compartmentalizing worry — setting aside a specific half-hour period each day to think about worries and consider solutions, and also deliberately avoiding thinking about those issues the rest of the day — people can ultimately help reduce those worries, research has shown.
"When we're engaged in worry, it doesn't really help us for someone to tell us to stop worrying," said Tom Borkovec, a professor emeritus of psychology at Penn State University. "If you tell someone to postpone it for a while, we are able to actually do that."
The new study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
While the new study was small (it began with 62 patients, and a number of them dropped out), the researchers found that people who used worry reduction techniques before beginning therapy regimens reduced their anxiety, stress and depressive symptoms significantly more than people using only standard anxiety treatments.
Four steps are involved in the stimulus control therapy to reduce worrying, according to Borkovec, who was not involved in the new research but was part of the group that developed stimulus control therapy for worry in the early 1980s.
First, patients must identify and realize when they are worrying. Second, they must set aside a time and place to think about these worries. Third, when they catch themselves worrying, they must postpone worrying, and instead focus on the task at hand. Finally, patients are told to use the time they've set aside for worrying to try and solve the problems their worries present."

Read the whole thing; and feel better!


Choosing goals that are important to you is one of the most
essential things you can do in order to live your dreams.
-Les Brown