I have many things to say, but not right now so I am just going to post a bit of a rant instead. Recently I filled out Slimming Magazine's reader survey. I like to give my opinion and there was a nice prize up for grabs.

As I started answering questions, it seemed to me that they were very skewed. Either you were fat and miserable and unhappy with your body - you were the "before" picture or you were thin and happy and loved your body - the "after" picture. There was no option for being the "during" picture, the person who is in the progress, the person who exercises and eats right most of the time, the person is happy with her body one day but not so happy the next.

It seems to be a whole mentality - from black to white. They never show the grey. When you read the magazine (and I'm not targetting Slimming Magazine especially) the stories are always about how the success story was fat and unhappy and unhealthy and unloved. Now they are not only thin, but all their problems are solved.

This just perpetuates the myth that all our problems are weight related. If only we were thin, we'd do better in our career, our love lives, our singing. Thin means happy. That is the greatest myth of our culture. Especially when you're fat. And it's easy to let ourselves believe it, isn't it? Far easier to think that we just have to diet to make the world right. Easier than dealing with emotions and feelings and deeply buried guilt. Just starve for a few weeks. Hey, can't do that? Well you must be weak and pathetic and greedy and lazy, hey?

At the heart of it all, is the idea that we have to be thin to be loved. Even when food = love. We have to be thin to deserve having someone else care about us. That is my biggest issue, I think.

So, after I got past that section of the survey, they asked who were the male and female celebrities I thought had the best bodies. Kinda dodgy I thought. Then it was which celebs had the best legs, the best chest, the best arm pits, the best pubes. Arrrrrghhhh! I just cut and paste "I don't care" for the whole 399 of those questions. I'm not even going to start on the implications behind it.