I need to start this episode off by saying that what I'm addressing here has everything
to do with the brainwashing of diet culture and its damage to our society.
When I mention the drugs used in this episode, it is in reference to weight loss associated
with insecurities and societal pressures, not what was intentionally created for medical
uses.
I'm also only just scratching the surface here.
I'm in an interesting position here to be able to comment on this.
As I was sitting on the couch on my phone, it was inevitable that tons of clickbait should
appear.
Maybe it's because I don't get out much or I do too much thinking but I need to ask
to what end?
In my personal life, I've had the awareness that there are individuals who I know that
have started the use of the supposed wonder drug ozempic.
Now, I mind my own business but I know the intended purpose for weight loss.
I stand there like a deer in headlights, shocked as though I'd received some news that I didn't
know how to process, in a way I had.
I look at these people and I think, but why?
These are beautiful people inside and out, genuinely.
Why would someone want to do this to themselves?
To use a medication to lose weight for purely aesthetic purposes.
Ah, society.
Society and its norms.
Its clutches strike yet again.
It is especially alarming to me after what I've come to learn from my own life experiences.
It's been a lot of work, a lot of thinking, a lot of self-awareness and I realize many
people have not reached this point.
Let's have a little chat.
I have had the luxury of being all sizes.
I've been plus-sized, I've been mid-sized, I've been thin, I've been all the steps
in between.
I've had to change stores to shop at different ones because I didn't fit the largest sizes
they had and I've also had to shop in the children's department of some because the
smallest of the women's sizes was much too big.
All of these places I've been have taught me so many things.
The most important, your weight does not matter.
It will not fix your problems.
It will not make you happier.
It will not bring you what you're looking for in life.
It's easy to sit in unhappiness and blame your body, your size, something you aren't,
something you are under the illusion that you can change and it will make all the difference
in the world.
It doesn't because that is not the issue.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that being thin is not the answer.
It doesn't make you happier.
If anything, it makes all that you're feeling worse.
That much worse.
So many times I hoped and prayed that reaching a certain standard would absolve me of all
of the insecurities, all of the unhappiness that followed everywhere I went.
All it did in the end was make me wish that I didn't need to have a body as a physical
representation of who I am while I exist on earth because it's not the answer.
There are things that lurk and bubble beneath the surface and those are the things that
truly need your attention.
It's easier to sit and want to tackle something you can touch, feel, semblances of result.
It's a lot harder to know, to believe that you can actually change the real problems
underneath.
Society is to blame.
Yes.
It tells us how we should be, what we should desire, how we should want to look, what we
should read, what hobbies to have, and then we all stand in line and join in.
We look upon those who do not fit that mold as though there is something wrong with them.
We unintentionally, and even sometimes intentionally, remind them of the ways in which they are
not fitting in.
This is the nature of our human in this entangled dance.
We can be good people.
We can have good intentions, but we still follow along and perpetuate this hell we're
in.
Imagine that.
Did you know that obesity genes exist scientifically speaking?
Do you know that in our history, our ancestry as humans on earth, there has always existed
humans that would have been labeled as plus sized even way back when?
Do you remember when there was a time where having extra to love on your body was admired
even desired?
I recently learned that fat phobia and fat shaming are something that has existed forever,
though maybe in the old days of famine it would have been more about their standards
rather than focused in on our own.
There's evidence and a knowing that all those paintings you see in museums also have a filter
effect of their own.
Today, in photography, people are edited to look a certain way.
Well, it's no surprise, artists of the past used to also paint in this way.
Those portraits you'd see of people were created purposely in that way in order to
make them look flattering.
So if this is true that all sizes have existed in all of time, why are we like this?
Ah yes, insecurity sells.
The largest industry who profits the most is that of health and wellness, and I say
this in quotations because there is nothing well and healthy about this distorted propaganda.
Every diet product, workout product that promises miracles, supplements in support of the same,
coaches that claim they'll help you lose weight, I even saw two ads recently that were
quite disturbing, that you could buy a pair of earrings that will help you lose weight
and shrink your arms, that you can get a posture assistance device that will allow you to shed
the pounds if you use it because somehow a straighter spine as forced by an apparatus
would be able to provide that.
And the worst part is, there are people who would purchase this and try this out of desperation.
The most shocking thing of all that seems to be unknown, and I say this knowing that
I didn't know, nor did I really believe it when I first learned of it, diets do not work.
Dates have a 95% failure rate, 95, even if you are aware, you may be in that 95% that
somehow still keeps trying.
If you put that into perspective, that is messed up.
Imagine being told that you have a 95% chance of getting into an accident if you get in
your car and drive today?
Are you going to get in and go?
I'm going to say probably not, but you're going to go on that diet or try that new product,
aren't you?
The pressure applied to us by society and by one another as a result of that brainwashing.
It means the industry keeps making money and will continue to do so.
Don't worry, they'll say, this time it'll work.
We got you.
And sometimes it's in a way of manipulating you, gaslighting you, perhaps saying, oh trust
me, this is not a diet, it's a lifestyle.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so what is the standard of beauty anyways?
What do we want to look like?
What is it that will cure our sadness and all of our problems in this world?
I think back to when I was younger and the body type desired was super thin, sickly,
skeletal.
I recently found old teen magazines when I was picking through items back home and I
was in shock.
We wanted to look like that.
I think about experiences I've had in nursing where I've seen people's appearance disintegrate
when they're terminally ill or palliative, how emaciated and hungry they look, a shell.
This is what the girls in the magazines looked like.
That's what we all aspired to be.
Now, well, I don't think we even know.
Every time I open my phone and gossip clickbait appears, it's a new celebrity that has succumbed
to the pressure of ozempic use, taking this miracle drug in order to lose weight.
Even celebrities who are fit or thin to begin with, eventually they look skeletal, hollowed
out eyes and cheekbones, clothing falling off of their bodies, even people like the
Kardashians, the ones who spent millions of dollars on plastic surgery, personal training
and supplements to achieve what we know as the gold standard of the body, the beauty.
And guess what?
They started ozempic too.
They weren't even happy with themselves, with their bodies.
Those are the ones that we're supposed to try to look like, to want to look like.
So which is it then?
If the people who have the supposed perfect bodies that will help us reach nirvana, if
they're not even happy with how they look, where they feel a need to push further past
where they're already at, what is that really saying?
It sends the message that even if you are enough, it's still not enough.
So again, I ask, to what end?
What happens when everyone gets on the ozempic train and everyone looks the same?
Skeletal, sickly?
Will we all be happy then?
Will we stop mocking one another?
Will we stop telling people they're not looking how they're supposed to?
Not likely.
Not to mention, that is not what will make anyone happy.
Look at it.
If the celebrities with the beautifully sculpted bodies that we admire and pine to be aren't
even happy with their bodies, that means that's not the issue.
They keep pushing it in the wrong direction, trying to change the wrong thing and scramble
to push even further because it isn't working.
I just haven't gotten there yet.
I haven't done it right.
That's what they say with their actions.
Not stopping to ask.
If maybe it's because it's the wrong direction, they're headed in.
Why do you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result?
When time and time again, it's shown you you aren't getting where you need to be,
getting what you want.
Even a rat in a lab will figure out that after a time, they're pushing the wrong button
when the food doesn't come down the tube.
And if we're all the same, how will the diet industries continue to profit off of us then?
And how boring!
Imagine if everyone looked the same?
There would be no variety, no beauty.
Why should we want to strive to look the same?
I guess it would make it easier.
There would only be one type.
Everyone would be an option to date and the opportunities would suddenly become endless
because everybody would be the exact same.
Your preference would have no choice but to be what society tells you it is, the only
available option.
Ugh.
Maybe I'm one of the only few that feels this way, but I personally think this has gone
way too far.
I also wonder how many of these people using OZMPIC were the same people who refused the
pandemic vaccine when it was brought out with the arguments of they didn't know the long-term
effects, they didn't want to put foreign materials into their bodies that would alter
their composition, but suddenly, if it's promising to wipe away all your problems,
who cares about all those other factors?
Ugh.
It makes me angry that this is where the world is at, and will continue to head in that direction.
Variety is the spice of life, my friends.
We're not all meant to look the same.
If we did, our genetics would have evolved this way.
It would have caused us all to be similar in every attribute, but we aren't, for a
reason.
We, as a society, can't even be trusted to know how we should look.
Look at the trends over the last 20 years with regards to body image.
Society can't even make up its mind on what it wants us to do, what it wants us to look
like, and yet, we trust it blindly.
We become desperate.
We try to alter our bodies using meds just to fix the problems we blame our bodies for.
Maybe we should just start listening to what's in our hearts, find out what the real issues
are inside of us, learn to truly love ourselves as we are, and including those around us.
It might be something to consider, eh?