Heh, it took me a while but I found a BttF quote that fits my topic.
Boys and girls, today I am going give the obligatory blog-rant about Body Acceptance. Or as most blogs want to call it, Fat Acceptance. <See blogs like How to Eat a Cheeseburger (howtoeatacheeseburger.wordpress.com), and Shapely Prose (www.kateharding.net).>
Truths I hold to be self-evident:
- I do not have the ‘perfect body’.
- I do not want the ‘perfect body’.
- I am lazy.
- I love food.
- The first two mean that I do not care about having the ‘perfect body’, nor do I want to put in the effort to attain the ‘perfect body’.
- The third and fourth mean that I will tend toward the rounded, or ‘fat’ body type.
- However, I do not desire to be ‘fat’ because personally, I find ‘fat’ unattractive.
Author’s Note: I emphasize personally because I know that there are others who find that curvier is better, and would disagree that ‘fat’ is unattractive. I do not make the blanket-statement that fat is unattractive, merely that I personally find it to be so. I also hate the word ‘fat’, but I refuse to be politically correct about it and use terms like ‘heavy’ or ‘plus-size’. So instead I will ‘quote’ it, to remind everyone that the term ‘fat’ is subjective, and there is no general definition. I will not assign a dress size, or pound quantity to determine what ‘fat’ is.
So while I may seem hypocritical, the truth is that I hold with body acceptance, but not fat acceptance. Personal philosophy is that if I am comfortable with my body at a certain weight, then that’s fine. If at any point I become uncomfortable, or the clothes that fit at the comfortable weight cease to fit as well, then healthy diet and excercise is acceptable. I also try not to go by the numbers, because I think I weigh about 10 pounds more than I look like I weigh, therefore striving to weigh 115 pounds may be a bad life choice. I like who I am, and I don’t want to be unhealthy, or to look like I just survived the Holocaust.
So I guess while I have moved beyond striving to look like death warmed over, I have fallen short of fat acceptance. Does that put me at the happy medium, or do I need to seek to reach that next level of celestial understanding? I feel guilty for dieting, and I feel guilty for not dieting. I can’t accept being ‘fat’, but I can’t agree that we should all look like MK Olsen. I think that there is a curvy, healthy, happy place that we can all strive toward that is not a standard weight, or BMI, or dress size. And when magazines describe a model that is slowly and painfully dying as her insides consume themselves out of want for food as sexy and hot, but then make a point of the statistic that most men prefer curves, they leave us all wondering what that standard of beauty that we are all striving toward actually means.
According to every single man I’ve ever asked, men like proportional women. We need to be able to stand up straight, without breaking our spines because there’s not enough muscle in our 18-inch waist to hold up our 40-inch bust. It seems to me that most men instinctively understand that our bodies were created with purpose. No one can deny that biceps are for lifting, hamstrings and quadriceps, are for walking, and fingers are for fine detail jobs. In the same way, hips were intended to cradle unborn children, not just to swing about whilst we stomp up and down a straight, elevated walkway in order for people to admire our clothes. Our waists are muscled to help us lift, and walk, and to do work, not just to cinch and shrink and use as bait for men. And everyone knows what the purpose of the part-of-us-that-requires-a-bra is. (I’m not being immature, I just don’t want creepy people searching for that certain anatomy on the internet to hit on this site just because that keyword is here.)
So I think that people who work out in order to reach their physical peak, and to be in the best possible form have the right idea. I admire them, and their determination to take the best care of the only body they were given. There is a certain beauty to a body that is well cared-for, and that is healthy.
SOPHOMORIC REASONING: There is nothing sexier than being healthy, confident, and comfortable with yourself. And that goes for guys too. 
As a girl, and even more so as a college sophomore, I totally get the whole pressure-to-look-a-certain-way. I get it better than most adult women do, as far as I’m concerned. But even if I want to try to deny that there is a certain human form that is more attractive than others, I have to admit that I am neither comfortable nor confident when there is an inner tube of fat ringing my waist and hips. So it’s pretty hard to think you’re attractive when you feel ‘fat’.
