| It's Your Human Right to Love Your Body |
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| Cari Corbet-Owen | |||
| Tuesday, 06 March 2007 | |||
  It’s March and it’s the month in which we celebrate Human Rights Day. And yes, I know that what we normally celebrate has to do with political considerations about freedom and equality for all... but in so many ways, how comfortably or uncomfortably we live in our bodies is a political and economic event, shaped by cultural and gender differences and an economy where advertisers purvey their latest and greatest products all designed to boost their bottom line profits (often at our expense). Nowhere is this more true than the diet industry. And there’s another kind of freedom we’re entitled to – and this right eludes even the skinnies. It’s the right to live free of the diet mentality that causes so many eating disorders and obesity. If you’re trapped into an oppressive diet regime, you’re not free, you’re being manipulated into doing something that promotes getting fatter as well as increases your chance of having an eating problem. Your human rights are being eroded. Sadly, just like apartheid was once supported and kept in place by cultural beliefs, it is often our cultural heritage (diets – in their ever-mutating form- have been around for eons) that stops us from freeing ourselves from fad dieting. Just one of the many problems with the old system of apartheid is that it taught us some people were apparently worthier than others of respect and love. The same happens sadly in the world of appearance: if you have the body our Western culture says we should have, you’re apparently worthy and if you don’t you aren’t. But our bodies have all been created by the same Creator, so one body cannot possibly be worth more than another based on thinness or fatness – what sort of crazy notion is that? Where in any holy text do you find requirements for the size of our hips, breasts, waist or BMI? Self-love and self-respect are vital steps towards regaining our rights to live as worthy human beings regardless of our colour, creed, shape or size.
Disclaimer: Harmonious Living is written for and read by a community of individuals with strong and independent opinions. While the publishers of Harmonious Living are dedicated to providing a forum in which views can be openly expressed, those views do not necessarily reflect those of the publishers.
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