DePauw University has a slew of great places for students to work out. We can take walks or go for runs in the Nature Park, exercise in the new Welch Fitness Center or dive into the pool in Erdmann Natatorium. With the first full week of school came fitness classes like yoga, turbo kick and piyo. Many students and faculty take advantage of the exercise options, and that’s great. It’s important to be healthy and fit. But it’s also important to make sure you’re working out for the right reasons.
In today’s society, we are bombarded by images of what the “ideal” body should be. Society pushes women to be thin, but not so thin that they’re boney. Men are supposed to be muscular, but usually not so muscular that veins are popping. Somewhere along the road, the entertainment industry became so set on this standard of beauty that they began altering models’ bodies. A January 23, 2014 post on Huffington Post quoted male model CJ Richards saying, "I feel like it's been going on since the film world. Why would you watch a movie without special effects? You understand that this isn't real. There's Photoshop in magazines and special effects in movies. I mean, it happens. So accept it and know that this is actually a real person underneath all of the computerized effects that they're adding in."
That’s all well and good, but what about presenting accurate representations of people and their bodies? Everyone knows that the pictures in magazines are of real people, so it’s logical to think that the pictures are more or less accurate representations of what those real people look like all prettied up. We shouldn’t have to stop in the middle of reading the latest Cosmo or People and think, “I wonder Demi Lovato really looks like this or if they photoshopped her.”
Fortunately, people within and outside of the entertainment industry are standing up and speaking out against the inaccurate representations. On Aug. 25, takepart.com published an article about Meghan Kausman, an Australian model who got thoroughly ticked when a swimwear company photoshopped her size eight body to a size four. The article quotes Kausman saying, “They had drastically altered my body, thinning out my stomach and thighs in an attempt to box me into the cultural ideal of beauty.” Kausman is not alone. A dosomething.org article quotes five celebrities, including Brad Pitt and Kim Kardashian, condemning photoshopping bodies into cultural standards of beauty.
Yes, thin and muscular are body types. But so are curvy and stocky. Each one has pros and cons, and each one can be healthy. So next time you go to the gym, ask yourself, “Am I going because I want to have the healthiest version of my body type, or am I going because I want to fit society’s standard of beauty?”