I Really Don't Think It's Just the Media

Okay, so remember those really annoying and kind of gross "10 days to a flat belly!" or whatever ads? The ones with the flab next to the fit and, like, a measuring tape or something (thank you Ad Blocker, for ensuring I saw these for maybe 30 seconds, so also I have no idea what they actually looked like, nor would I want to)?

Well, it now looks like the male equivalent is out. There's just a small difference.

It's to go from a standard, reasonably fit body to an 8-pack complete with massive pecs and even shoulders!

So...the girls just want to lose weight, and the guys want to get into shape.... I know by this point it's instinct to blame the way the media promotes skinny women and buff men...but, hello? It wouldn't work if we weren't hard-wired in some way--and you can talk of preconditioning since no one's really a tabula rasa, but if you look at trends in model sizes...I hear Marilyn Monroe would have actually been a dress size 5 or even 7 by today's standards (unless, of course, you're talking about the grossly inflated sizes, in which case she'd be a 2 floating in a circus tent...). Not to mention the stupidity of sizing in women's clothes, where no one is willing to face up to exactly how big (or small) their waist actually is, and every time I go to buy a pair of jeans I actually have to try them on! (Men, there's a reason women take forever to shop, and only half of it is pickiness.)

People, stop blaming the media and look in the mirror...or, then again, don't.


In other 'news' (there must be a better word for any topic sadly personal)...I finished "Bonk." It's pretty good and very informative, although there's a lot more wisecracking in it than I remember "Stiff" having, and I have to wonder if that's because she was trying to get over the uncomfortableness of the topic or because the editors thought that the readers would need it to get themselves over the uncomfortableness of the topic.


Also, "The Box" is another point for my rule of Never Watch Movies with Two-Word Titles Where 'The' is the First Word. (I think the one breaker so far is "The Departed," which was pretty fucking awesome.)