The never-ending quest for the perfect body and how to get it

The media is deliberately unfair to women in terms of what they should look like.  Too-thin models grace runways in Paris, billboards in New York City, and covers of Vogue magazine.  Worldwide, women have been marketed a skewed body image that isn’t just unattractive, it’s also unhealthy and nearly impossible to maintain.  A woman’s body is not made to remain in that unhealthy state, and will fight against efforts to remain that way.  This means, the more you try to become too-skinny like the models, the more you’re committing physical abuse on yourself.

There is a great deal of money to be made off of a woman’s insecurities.  Marketers target things like age lines, complexion, chest size, lip fullness, greying or thinning hair, cellulite, hair removal, sagging face (or any other part of the body) and even the shape of her feet.  It’s not any surprise that they’ve put a massive bulls-eye on the one that hurts the most.  Any woman is going to be conscious of her weight, and most will tell you that they believe themselves to be overweight.  Though society the world over is definitely heavier than ever, there are a lot of ladies who are only suffering because their self image is wrong.  When all you see are the models on the television, billboards and magazines, you end up with this idea that “everyone” says we’re supposed to look this way, so you start feeling that you must be the one who is wrong.

What is truly terrible about the entire campaign against being a healthy weight, is that men don’t actually find it attractive at all.  Other women don’t either, when they’re being honest.  It’s just a matter of heavily marketed brainwashing. Following are links to articles that have studies proving this point, and the realization that we have been lied to by the media will come through loud and clear.
1.What men prefer in a perfect female body
2. Brown University’s report on Body Image
3. A full scientific study offered through the US National Library of Medicine on Internet Daters Body Type Differences: Race-Ethnic and Gender Differences
4. Psychology Today has this to say: what do men really want

Having taken cues from a journalist, a university, a scholarly institution, and one from a psychology stance, it becomes easy to see that we have been duped, and quite thoroughly.

The first ideal for a woman to be overly skinny has come from fashion designers.  They wanted to allow the shock factor to come through on their runways when showing potential clients their newest designs.  Their intent was never to expect all women to adhere to those unrealistic proportions, it was all done in an effort to gain new clients and cement existing ones.  They searched for women who were thin in unhealthy ways already, and made their offerings fit proportions too tiny for anyone else to get into.  By all rights, the clothing the models wore along the catwalk was custom fitted, and never intended for the rest of us.

After pictures of the newest lines coming out, women everywhere began their decline from healthy and lean to bony and wasting away very quickly.  Magazines jumped on board, as did fragrance designers, jewelers, and any other marketer aimed at women.  This new skinny trend seemed to be what was selling, so they ran with it, without any regard or care to what this would do to overall health.  As new nutrition initiatives have begun to surge, and people have come to accept that this is not what any woman is meant to look like, women have slowly been able to regain a healthy body.

Programs like The Venus Factor have come out as a way for women on either side of the pendulum to get healthy.  If you find you are too skinny and bony, or have a few too many curves for your liking, this kind of program exists to right the balance.  Women require an entirely different approach than traditional mens diet and exercise programs.  Our bodies are created to sustain life, and hold an extra layer of healthy fat for that purpose.  We also have trouble with leptin resistance, and are 3x more prone to metabolic disorders.  Due to these things, it can be difficult to sculpt our bodies properly.

Getting healthy can be very easy with the right tools at our disposal.  Getting rid of the idea that media has perpetuated is the first big step, once you have a clearer picture of overall body health you can easily move to the next big step.  Changing how and when you eat can sometimes be more important than what you’re eating, and getting used to a more healthy diet is huge in terms of success with any program.  The last major hurdle for anyone is working in exercise.  That one tends to be the easy part.  Once you’ve put yourself in the hands of those who’ve become experts in their fields, and are willing to help you get healthy, you will become the female ideal that has been lauded for centuries as the most aesthetically pleasing body to men and women alike.