ALSO -The Last Furlong Blog and Life on an alien planet.wordpress

Monday 30 July 2012

What IS the matter with Mary-Jane?

A.A Milne's poem comes to mind every time I hear that Britain has a bad body image leading to depression, eating disorders and mental health issues. We have a bad self-image. What IS the matter with us?  The media are blamed for presenting body images that are impossibly unachievable for ordinary people.

But I think it is much more complex than that. Blaming the media is a cop-out. I think the blame should also be placed in front of the scientific health experts (our leaders) who hammer on and on and on about  health, fitness and diet to the masses tediously repetitively. Everyone is measured against BMI or some other scientific standard - we're preached at and legislated to have lifestyles that remove almost anything pleasurable like smoking, eating and drinking. No wonder people are depressed - we have impossibly unachievable lifestyle disorder. We are never good enough!
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"What IS the matter with Mary Jane?
There's lovely rice pudding for dinner again."

I'll tell you the matter with Mary Jane - she doesn't like rice pudding, it's only someone elses opinion that it's lovely or good for her, she's the one that has to actually eat it, she's bored of it, and it's stressing her out. Unlike us ordinary folk she has enough guts left in her to complain. Just leave her alone for God's sake.

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