The American Extreme

There are moments in life, when my ever-present internal dialogue gets a reality check. For the most part, deep down in the soul of Trina, I know myself to be a well adjusted human being. That said however, I am also my own worst critic. I fixate on my flaws and I have trouble letting go of even the smallest of errors. Sometimes it seems my mind is determined to find the worst in me, and then convince myself that how I perceive myself in my head, is also how the rest of the world sees me. Ever so often though, by the grace of God and all that is good in this world, I see with clarity the fact that all things considered, good and bad, I am pretty happy, healthy and grounded human being. One such moment happened the other night while standing in line at the grocery store. Unfortunately, this revelation revolved around one of the saddest aspects of American cultural extremes, obesity and anorexia. Let me rewind a little to included all that transpired leading up to the grocery line.

Since I graduated college, I have tried to make regular exercise a part of my life. In high school I relied on sports teams for this, but during college I got away from any sort of exercise routine as a result of crazy class schedules, multiple on-campus jobs, and an overloaded extracurricular calendar. So in the year and a half since graduation, I have put forth considerable effort to make it to the gym 3-5 times a week. This last month however, was a whirlwind and my gym time shrank to about 1 day a week. Susceptible as I am for beating myself up over this, I had "seen" (otherwise stated as imagined) the fat bulging off my body in new and unwanted places. Determined to get back on the wagon, I put aside all the reasons I didn't have time for the gym on Tuesday night, and hopped on a eliptical for 30 minutes of cardio.

Though the eliptical is a great workout, it is not exactly the height of excitement. In fact, it can be downright boring. So to stave off a lack luster performance due to mind numbing boredom, I often read trashy magazines to entertain myself. Tuesday night was no different, I grabbed an US Weekly and began pedaling away.

The last time I read this magazine, there was a section in the back called "Celebrity Weight Watch". It basically plastered pictures of famous women on the page and said whether they had gained or lost weight. I was rather disgusted at the time, but forgot about it and went on with my workout, figuring it was just a one time thing. Well, it wasn't. I was reading the same publication on Tuesday night, and what did I find but "Celebrity Weight Watch". Not only are they tracking the weight of these women, but they are also placing judgment on them based on their weight gain or loss. It is pretty sick. I made up my mind right there to stop reading that magazine, and those kind of magazines in general. Though they can sometimes be entertaining and have interesting fashion advice, they melt your brain, and destroy the confidence of women across the country.

After I closed the magazine, seething, I finished my workout, and was feeling pretty good. I have written about this before on here, but I love exercise. It makes me feel great on so many levels. Sometimes it is hard to get to the gym, but once I am there, I rarely, if ever regret it.

Anyway, on the way home, I had to stop at the grocery to get some items for a dinner party my roommate and I were having. Granted, the items that filled my basket were pretty crappy, bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, and other rarely bought items, but they were for a special occasion so I didn't worry about it.

I got up to the check out, ready to pay for my stuff, and couldn't help but notice the plethora of crap magazines, placed in a location designed for standing and waiting. On the cover of every single magazine, a woman was either being accused of anorexia, due to the veins jutting out from under her barely existent skin which clung desperately to her bony frame, or accused her of slovenly behavior which resulted in "weight gain" otherwise known as actually reaching a normal, healthy size.

Then I looked up from the grotesque images of starved starlets accosting my eyes, and noticed the people around me at the check out counter. Every single one, and I do mean every one, was morbidly obese. Not 15 or 20 extra pounds, but 50, 100, 150 pounds overweight. The person behind me, in front of me, in the aisle next to me, the cashier, every single one was heavy to the point of leaning on their carts because their legs couldn't support the weight they were being forced to hold for the length of time it took to buy groceries.

As I bent over to place my basket on top of the stack below the counter, I noticed my own legs, a lifelong source of dissatisfaction for me. I have never been so glad to see their healthy shape, the strong muscles in my calf and thigh, the normal way they attached to my hip and pelvis, without jutting bones, or protruding mounds of fat. I realized how lucky I was to have a healthy body.

I looked next at the carts around me, loaded with with coke, hot dogs, bleached white bread, chips a hoy, fritos, cheese in a can, beer, and I realized how poorly these people were feeding themselves, despite their size. At once I was confronted with malnutrition on both ends of the spectrum; the young women (and men for that matter) who starve themselves to attain an unrealistic physical ideal, and the people who fill their bodies with calories and sugar and fat, but no vitamins and minerals or fiber. And yet these same people feel bad about themselves because they too cannot meet the prescribed physical ideal. And what is worse is that many of them have no idea how to fix their problem and so continue to buy crap.

In that moment I never loved my mom more for her "granola" tendencies. For her insistence on carrot sticks in our lunch, milk at dinner, no soda except for special occasions, and if we had a treat like Dunkin' Donuts (which happened once in a blue moon) we were forced to eat a piece of fruit first. And fast food, well that only happened on the rarest of occasions.

The American cultural landscape has become a wasteland of extremes, extreme wealth or extreme poverty, extreme political ideologies, blantant hate or over the top political correctness, self inflicted starvation or obesity. What has happened to moderation? Why must everything fall so far to one side or the other? When did middle of the road beliefs and lifestyles become synonymous with waffling- "Just choose a side already" accusations? I for one, will happily stay in the middle. I don't want my collarbone to protrude an inch from my neck, nor do I want pockets of fat on my body so large there are names invented for them. I don't want to be a crazy leftist liberal or an ultra conservative righter, I don't want to drip with diamonds, or celebrate my poverty and ignorance. I will happily stay moderate, in lifestyle, in food consumption, in political beliefs, and in the amount I allow my inner voice to beat me up.