Stop the objectification!

Ladies: We live in a society that taught us the best thing we can do for ourselves is try to be skinny. I witnessed this lesson first hand in a little game my daughter played on her iPad last night. It's similar to a roll playing Toca Boca type game. You feed people and based on your choices the person has a dial that goes from green to red. If they eat cake, pizza, etc. it goes to red and they actually turn fat on the screen. To help them get healthy you do sports and workout. As a person who does enjoy working out and running and yes I enjoy eating foods labeled "healthy" - all I saw was my daughter learning to self objectify and to have fat phobia. 

My husband didn't see any issue.  To me this game was saying if you get fat you're bad and then to get the dial on green, the cartoon girl had to get skinny via eating veggies and running or doing sit ups. That to me is not even a little bit of a secret agenda - it's 1,000% diet culture. The disordered obsessive pursuit of thinness is not a lesson I want to teach my child.

Our culture praises bodies as though they are objects to be consumed by the eyes of others. We self objectify AND most of us have been socialized to self objectify through the lens of a man- trying to force ourselves to be sexual objects for a man's consumption. For instance picture yourself getting ready to go out - do you pick out an outfit with the thought of how men will think you look in it? When you walk through the gym - do you picture men looking at you? I never really noticed how often I objectify my own self . I would say the majority of women have a huge problem with being objectified by men. Cat calling and being hit on or touched without permission. This is unacceptable! But I would bet your are objectifying your own body too.

We have a body to experience life and it isn't a sign of our worth. You are not meant to be an object to please others or gain approval. We shouldn't label the size of someone's body or the food they consume as good or bad. When we do this we basically spend our entire life consumed in the quest to try to "fix" our bodies. 

I no longer want to see my body as a problem. I don't want to focus on dieting or weight loss because I find it damaging to my mental well being. I have been trying to become skinny for 30 years and all it has done is make me hungry, exhausted, obsessed with food, and hate myself. I have decided to let myself eat, let myself gain weight, and let myself love who I am regardless of what I look like.