*DING DING DING* …Two Boobs, No Waiting!!
I rarely exercise. And by “rarely” I mean NEVER.
My wife on the other hand works out several times a week. She is quite the little hard body. And you know what they say, “a hard woman is good to find” (wicked grin). The bummer part about having a workout queen for a wife is that she wants me to work out too. Yuck. She wakes up at the crack of dawn and bounces, or yoga’s around our room, I’ll lay there pretending to sleep RIDDLED with guilt. She then talks about how great she feels after a good sweat. Good sweat? I don’t know how you can feel good after sweating. I sweat all the time. I’m sweating right now and I’m just sitting here. All sweating makes me feel is sticky. I try to convince her that I AM in shape, “Honey,” I tell her, “potato could be a shape.”
So I resolved to get in shape by THINKING about joining a gym.
I took one of those tours where one of the muscle bound employees’ shows you how all the different machines work. I was on one of their torture machines that you put weights down on one end and pull down with your arms. So there I am, arms out stretched, which, you can imagine, caused my shirt to untuck, revealing my rippling, cascading “flab-alanche.” The guy who was showing me the torture machine looked at, and nodded toward my stomach said, “Cool tattoo.” TATTOO?!?!?! I thought to myself…tattoo…what is this irritably fit guy talking about? I don’t have any tattoos. I looked down and saw he was referring to the stretch marks etching across my protruding belly. As quickly as I could I told him, “Oh yeah, yeah, I just got that done. That’s the Chinese symbol for NEGLECT.”
I read a couple of articles this week which essentially (and literally) asked, “Is cosmetic surgery “ethically corrupt”?” The first article also posed a broader question, “Is aesthetic cosmetic surgery medicine or just exploitation?
When I first read it I thought, “What a stupid question.” What if your child was born with a cleft palate? Is it ethical to have it fixed?
If not, what about braces? I could have saved thousands of dollars not getting my kids teeth fixed.
The fact of the matter is people have been altering their appearance for centuries. In Thailand they wear brass rings around their necks to stretch themselves out. Is that cultural, or morally wrong?
The second article I read was about breast implants (had I known that I would have read it first) it states, “Cosmetic surgery is nothing more than an industrial-scale scientific experiment.” It then went on to explain about a study published in the journal Psychological Medicine. I read this article several times. And…well…I think it’s flawed, flawed, flawed. Here are a couple of examples of the dumbery:
Example # 1
“Next month, for example, the journal Psychological Medicine will publish a study of almost 1,600 Norwegian adolescent girls who were monitored over a 13-year period.” So first the study is of ADOLESCENT girls monitored over 13 years? That math is ALL messed up. Let’s say they mis-wrote that and the study is of adult women who, while adolescents, had cosmetic surgery. Even then, the study is skewed. Where are the parents? What father is going to say to his thirteen year old girl, “Honey, your mother and I have decided to get your some boobs for your next birthday.” You get a young teenager, who doesn’t have the maturity, or developed moral compass a gift like that and it will be *DING DING DING*…Two Boobs, No Waiting!! Yeah, her life may be messed up.
Duh!! Show me a study of 35 year olds followed over thirteen years and take it more seriously.
Example # 2
“The finding is that women who use cosmetic surgery do not (I added the italics) have lower opinions of their general attractiveness than women who do not opt for surgery. However, they display more symptoms of depression and anxiety, use more illicit drugs and have stronger histories of self-harm and suicide attempts. And the surgery is likely to make things worse… As the researchers conclude: “A series of mental health symptoms predict cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery does not in turn seem to alleviate such mental health problems.”.” WHAAA?!?! So the conclusion is COSMETIC surgery will NOT alleviate mental health problems? Good work, Sherlock. What was your first clue? Seriously, who funded this research?
The article concludes with this, “Cosmetic breast implantation is a flawed and ethically corrupt psychological experiment, carried out for commercial profit on vulnerable women. And it should now be halted.”
Vulnerable women? Are there black vans driving around abducting unsuspecting women and forcing breast implants on them? I would imagine most women who choose to have the surgery save up their pennies to have it done.
Now, there is still a debate on rather or not there are health issues if silicone breast implants rupture (I can see there would be) but the piece failed to mention saline implants. If those rupture they would pose no threat to the health of a woman (other then the actual surgery).
For me, the bottom line is this: we have dominion over our own bodies. If it makes me, or anyone, happy to let myself go, start working out, or have surgery to improve myself, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else the government, and everyone else, should butt out.
