Working out...ideas about body image

One of the positive life changes I've made since moving to Philly has been starting a good work-out regimen. There's a gym around the corner from me, so it's easy to get there and come home to shower. I've been doing yoga class one night a week there, then cardio and weight-lifting as many days a week as I can fit in. Given that my father has always promoted going to the gym as the panacea for all that is bad in life, I had high expectations for my new habit.

I feel great when I leave the gym, but since I started working out, I've noticed an unhealthy preoccupation that I've never dealt with before: my weight. I had such a fast metabolism growing up that people used to ask whether I was anorexic. I could never understand why 1) girls would starve themselves to look like models and actresses or 2) why even models and actresses would want to be that thin--I knew that it was uncomfortable.

And now, for the first time, I am feeling what those girls must have felt. I expected to lose weight working out, although I didn't feel I needed to, but discovered after a month that I had actually gained a few pounds (possibly muscle, but this didn't console me) and weighed more than I ever had before. Suddenly I was noticing that all of my pants were tight. I began to scrutinize my body every time I looked in the mirror for where the fat was residing. Finally, I realized I needed to step back. I checked my body mass index online, and discovered that I was at the low end of normal weight for my size.

Given my awareness of how the media feeds girls' unhealthy body image, I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that I had bought into it. In high school, I boycotted stores whose ads I found distasteful in this way--this Bebe ad was one of the all-time worst. Things haven't improved since then. Magazines and blogs today treat cellulite, which one blog notes "effects 90% of women," as if it were a disease, and this recent blog post is an utterly tasteless example of that.

Where does this all leave me? I can't wipe out all of the negative associations I have with fat, but I can keep in mind where they're coming from. As an academic, I spend a lot of my time thinking about how culture shapes people's ideas, so maybe it's time I think about that in relation to myself.

Want to learn more about media and body image? Check out www.about-face.org.