Posts feature partner companies & may be sponsored. Post contains affiliate links & I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on links.As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
A few weeks ago I came across an upbeat new song called All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor. As the mom of a tween girl I thought it would be something she would really enjoy and honestly, I loved both the song and the music video. Yes, I know…maybe 40 something moms shouldn’t enjoy pop music but let me tell you that beat really gets me moving when I work out!
The tween loved the song, thought the video was cute and like a good mom we actually discussed the lyrics and what they meant. Or, what *I* thought they meant! The message I got from it was to be happy with your body even if you aren’t a size 2. That what YOU may think of as fat is really a perfectly healthy weight. We don’t need photo shopped perfection in magazines and so what if your butt is just a tad bit bigger than it was 10 years ago. Who cares? Ms. Trainor just wants you to be happy with your body…right?
Call me naive but I thought it was a great message. Until you start reading the comments UNDER the YouTube video…
Can I just say that I didn’t even know that Skinny shaming was a thing? Who the heck makes people feel ashamed for being thin? Apparently quite a number of not so thin people. And, yeah…I know that the ‘shaming’ goes both ways. Society looks at people who are overweight with disgust and it seems like you’re screwed no matter what you look like. Skinny is apparently bad, fat is bad…so what exactly is the ‘right’ weight and how are we supposed to teach our teens to have a healthy body image if we don’t stop throwing around all this GUILT?
To hell with body image…I want cake!
We are a culture obsessed with perfection when it comes to how we look. We latch onto fad diets and go to doctors to have implants put in and fat sucked out. We dye our hair, tan our skin and then go to therapy and take antidepressants because we are miserable. Clearly our quest for perfection isn’t making us any happier. Maybe we have our priorities screwed up.
Ditch the ‘diets’. Sop telling yourself you can’t have a treat occasionally. Get off your butt and get moving once in a while. Eat more salads and then treat yourself to icecream. Go to the gym and then spend an hour in a chair reading a book. If you are a size 2 because you spend 4 hours a day at the gym and only eat raw vegetables you have a problem. If you are 100 pounds overweight because you eat fast food every day and never exercise than you have a problem, too! Moderation is key and happiness with our body image will only come when Hollywood stops pushing images of people who have been injected, snipped, tucked, padded and photo shopped.
Be happy with who you are, no matter what the scale says.
Or those vicious people on YouTube!
I wear many hats in this thing called life. I am a science geek, an introvert, a busy mother of teens and slightly neurotic about dirty dishes. I used to have a really important sounding job in cancer research when I decided to give it all up to be a stay at home mom. I played with Playdough, colored pictures of Barbies and freaked out when the baby ate dog food. Then the second kid came along and I started to think dog food might have nutritional value. What is Fractionated Living? It is me…divided by work, life, kids, marriage, and hobbies and trying to come up with the answer to life.