Mything in Action

Today I learned that I need to avoid my school’s breakfast sausage. It is yummy, but very greasy. It did not settle well with my stomach, which eventually altered my mood enough that I had to retreat to my room and go through a minor cleansing ritual to get things balanced again.

Today I sat through a lecture about myth and the body. One of the points of the lecture was that the cultural attitude towards the body is equivalent to the same culture’s attitude to the earth. I know that the earth has been a hot topic in the last couple years with the debate over global warming. Meanwhile, the health of the people of our country has likewise been a growing concern with the debate over the obesity epidemic.

I realize that my country does not have a clear stance towards body image. On the one had the media suggests that everyone should look at certain way at all costs. On the other, there is much catering towards larger people, almost supporting the growing size of the general population.

Argument A - The Thin Image

This image is proliferated by the media that being thin is good. It seems to me that the added dimension to this message is that a woman should be thin, blonde, perhaps a bit tan, with perfect teeth, and I am not too certain what the message is for men. This thinness is to be achieved by surgery and extreme dieting. Excerise helps, but I do not see it popping into the media artifacts as much as surgery or dieting. If one is not already meeting this ideal image, the process of moving into this image involves a full archetypal shift, changing the bodily frame that houses our myth-making soul.

Argument B - The Just Be Yourself Image

As best as I can tell, this image is a response to the so-called obesity epidemic, which is a different discussion altogether. Rather than tackle the issue fully, companies are restructuring their products to accomdate. Example 1: A few years ago, clothing companies shifted their sizing numbers for women’s clothing. Clothes that were a size 10 became a size 8, 12 because 10, and so forth. So the size 10 jeans I wear today are techincally the same as the size 12s I wore when I was 15. I makes me wonder if I have accomplished anything with my weight-loss plans. Example 2: Disney recently closed the “It’s a Small World” ride at its domestic parks because the boats could not support weight averaging more than 170lbs. per person. Because of the obesity epidemic, the average weight has been 185-200lbs. per person average, and they are rebuilding a historical ride to accomodate.

My take on this image is that it is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it is extremely good to give people the sense that it is okay to “just be yourself.” On the other hand, there is a threshold where one crosses into the realm of risking serious health damage. I do not agree with this, because the body is our vessel, a virtually sacred object. No human alive can mythologize their personal story without the body.

So the mixed message is indicitive of the cultural attitude of the earth. The attitude associated with Argument A is one of change and conservation, because it uses overall less energy. Argument B is one of excess. Use and deplete, and repeat without regard to how it affects the overall health of the planet. What I haven’t decided yet is whether either attitude is actually beneficial or not. I have yet to observe any collective attempt to fix any of our environmental problems in the long-term, only short-term fixes. A lack of mythological, metaphorical exercise.