Debunking the Myth of the Ideal Body Type

Our society is obsessed with weight loss, gym-culture and the pursuing of an absolutely healthy lifestyle. Essentially another brand of distractions to keep people occupied and oblivious to reality.

Why are we so preoccupied with achieving the ideal body type? Everyday I see people going to all sorts of extremes to fit into the mold of the socially accepted body shape. As if there is such thing as one and only ideal/healthy body type, a notion invented and promoted by the media.

One could easily argue, that these cruel notions of absolute health and ideal body weight, derive essentially from Nazism and the need for ideal soldiers. The more fascist a regime, the less window for 'deviant' body types.

The sad truth is, that people slightly larger than average in our society, still face extreme prejudice, just like any other non-conformist of any kind. I still do not get this necessity for everyone to fit into a stereotype. As a dancer, I have encountered many fat people who are dancers too, capable of doing whatever their thinner counterparts can.

Just look at her:

Nietzsche attempted to alter the traditional relation of the biological with the cultural by dispersing the commonly accepted saying: “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” He explains that there is no such thing as a notion of absolute health that could be applied to all, with such a term as health, being completely perspectival: “there are innumerable healths of the body”.

Thus, the bodily health of one can easily be the sickness of the other. For instance, each person has his or her own bad habits that up to a point provide their happy disposition and if those are in anyway altered for the sake of bodily health, then the person’s mental health is likely to suffer bad consequences. In the same manner, a particular body type can be ideal for one person but fatal for another, concluding that there is no such thing as an ideal health.

Therefore, the pursue of health is essentially brutality and one pursues it relentlessly since it is demanded by the society, at the end of the day one does so at the cost of his own health.

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