Body Image

I remember about 13 years ago I had my first Barbie doll. She had long beautiful black hair, a flat toned tummy, and beautiful large hips and oh, she always had make-up on. I strongly believed that and like most naïve kids that would look just like her when I grow up.

I don’t look like her, at all. In today’s world, one of the most popular topics to discuss is “health, fitness and looking good”,. When I discuss fitness with a friend who in my opinion looks super-hot, she’d always tell me how much she hates her lower abdomen and I’m not exaggerating when I say she looks like a model. I’m even guilt of saying things like, ‘how can Beyoncé look like that after having a child and I’m over here like, I love cake’.

Nigerians are catching up to the fact that being healthy and fit is the way forward. I even had a discussion with my workout partners about fitness. We came to realize that the beer industry would start failing, gardens would start shorting down business even though it’s one of the best businesses in Nigeria second to Pastoring (we’ll leave that for another day). ;)

It’s all well and good when everyone is fit and healthy but when everyone is trying to get an idea of perfection that doesn’t really exist, well that’s when the problem begins. Someone once told me the reason why women in general workout is to please their men, I told that person,  I work out because I know the image of myself I’m trying to create, I work out for myself. Wait a minuteK. Is that right?

According to Wikipedia, physical exercise is any bodily activity that enhances and maintains physical fitness and well-being. So it doesn’t have to do with your physical appearance right? Let’s go on, it is performed for various reasons including strengthening muscles and the cardiovascular system, hoarding athletic skills, weight loss and maintenance, as well as the purpose of enjoyment.

So just 1/5 of the benefits of physical exercise is associated with physical appearance and it didn’t mention that it was going to give you a celebrity's body, because let’s be honest, that body isn’t even real.

So why is having the perfect body so important and who came up with this idea of what is perfect and what isn’t. In a blog spot called ‘Pretty’, I discussed the concept of beauty and how it came about.  In a prehistoric artwork called The Venus of Willendorf the vital organs in women were exaggerated and the not so important ones were poorly represented. Being in the 21^st century life imitates art(check out Nicki Minag's Pink Friday cover and the picture of The Venus of Willendorf, you see what I'm talking about. Unrealistic versions of ourselves are created through photo shop or permanently through plastic surgery. The concept of the perfect body is impossible to obtain, even though you are ready to dedicate the amount of time, energy and money that goes into creating that body. It is impossible to get that exact body because most of the pictures we see have been photo-shopped and airbrushed. Ps, please take a good look at Kris Jenner during the earlier periods of KUWTK and the most recent ones.

I write this because I’ve taken note of some particular trends in the western world and how Africans or Nigerians have blindly followed in their footsteps, instead of avoiding the negative we just copy everything we see. Yes everyone is becoming more health conscious and eating right, but some of us are getting that “perfect body” through dietary pills, restricting consumption of particular food groups and starvation. We weren’t created to eat neither were we meant to eat some of the crap the western world has label as food. Rather food is just a fuel created to be eating moderately.

To be in any type of business there has to be a need, or want to meet the demands of the consumers. So a problem has to be created before the cure is. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease and a hand full of other problems were created through fast food and the solutions to these problems are dietary pills, workout equipment, surgery and health care. Let’s take Rob Kardashian as a case study. He’s the only Kardashian who seems to have had more problems than the others; he becomes anti-social and less successful as KUWTKs gets more popular. A large part of this reason is because he’s gained a lot of weight. His sisters have even found junk food under his bed and to top it all off he’s been suffering from depression.  He wears black clothes all the time, he hardly makes appearances on the show, he’s even had problems with Kim a number of times where she calls him lazy and fat. He didn’t even attend her wedding just because of his weight problems. People like Rob represent the before picture on ads while people like Kim represent the after picture on ads.

I see Nigerians growing too body conscious to the point that they beginning to have poor body image. Body image is an idea of how see ourselves based on our exposure to the media, or our definition of beauty despite what everyone thinks is beautiful. A part of me feels that we may not have a problem with body image because we have more important issues to worry about. But like most problems we have, which were caused by westernization it may just start. So ask yourself, why do you exercise, why do you have certain eating habits,  what is your definition of being fit and healthy, what is your definition of beauty and have all these notions been positively or negatively influenced by the media.

Pretty Hurts

A beauty pageant, is a show that make girls walk around half naked while putting on plastic smiles. They have been on for quite a long time. What’s the point of it all, except getting lots of money and becoming famous !? I believe the industry was designed to make young girls highly insecure with their looks and who they are, make them aspire to be ‘pretty’. Pretty in this context would mean having a coke bottle body, soft hair and a fairly light skin tone(not all the time). I think of myself as pretty, except for the times I don’t succumb in my yummy curve body to an uncomfortable posture, put on lots of makeup and take selfies in broad day light where my skin tone would be a little bit  brighter than usual.

So who set this standard, who set the rules on whose pretty and who isn’t? As an artlover, I watch a lot of art documentaries. There was a particular one which talked about the history of art, according to the documentary, nomadic man made a statue out of limestone dating 12500 years old which was later called the Venus of Willendorf. This statue was a woman who had huge thighs, hips, large breasts, no arms, the head left hardly defined and a very pronounced sexual organ. The archaeologists believed that the nomadic man placed emphasis on just the ‘important’ parts of the body. Those days, women didn’t need a head to think, reason or hands to produce and denominate. The nomadic women were only useful as child bearers given their features, hips for supporting the unborn child and huge breast to feed the child. This brings me to the 'form follows function principle'.

This principle is associated with the modern architecture and industrial design in the 20th century. The principle states that the shape of the building or object or (person) should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose. Even the famous architect, Adolf Loss declared that architectural ornament was criminal. Good to know that even our ancestors believed we couldn’t just be pretty for pretty sake, that beauty has purpose!

So the world wide obsession with ‘the perfect body’ may not be such a waste of time. But I ask myself, why did God make the majority of women assless and boobless? Are we to blame from all the chemicals and toxins we’ve injected to our bodies? Have they somehow alternated our biological makeup? Well, thank goodness we have the ability to permanently alter our physical makeup so that we can become ‘useful to our purpose’.

I even find myself being attracted to men with broad shoulders and huge arms. Maybe its because subconsciously I believe that a man with these features would be able to take care of my children and me. I bet nomadic women would have created sculptures of men with large arms and board shoulders, if only they didn’t believe they were only good for bearing children. I’m so grateful I belong in a time when my hips and chest size don’t define my worth.

With or without boobs, ass there are women who have no interest in bearing children. Also with or without broad shoulders there are men who are highly incapable of providing for their families. So what’s the whole purpose of beauty then? Why do we accept beauty for beauty sake? Are we to blame society for dictating what is beautiful or are we to blame ourselves for accepting what society says is beautiful?

I believe that beautiful is whole, a perfect balance of depth and definition. Depth represents darkness; it shows the magnitude of an object, how far it’s come and where it’s going. While definition represents light; it shows the details of an object, the little details that make that object unique, and the constants that would never be altered no matter the situation. Let’s translate that to a human. With us humans, beauty goes beyond looks, it much more than that. In fact you can only understand beauty when you love someone. 

When you encounter someone whose depth would mean life experiences, experiences they had control over, like friends and the kind of knowledge they let themselves get exposed to. While definition represents things we have no control over, God given features like sex, temperament or social upbringing. Like a beautiful landscape, the ying yang symbol or an old lady laughing, you can only find beauty in the perfect balance of two opposites. 

So I believe that beauty goes beyond physical purpose, it’s multi-dimensional. From now on, any time you look at someone or something think very hard before you define, term as beautiful