Recently, Lady Gaga has made waves about body image and her struggles with eating disorders in the latest Glamour magazine.
“I always have been [conflicted about my body]," And some days are better than others, you know? Some days I feel fantastic. Today’s good. [But] at the end of the day, I’m a tortured soul."
Known as quite the visual recording artist, we’ve seen some of her creations: the meat dress, the alien egg and the Joan of Arc look.
But regardless of how many artistic visual expressions she puts out there, insecurity is still a painful reality. Like a lot of us out there, struggling with eating disorders, Lady Gaga was once bullied. And you just need to look at your nearest gossip magazine to read how she’s scrutinized. Last summer, tongues went wagging as she did, supposedly, the most outrageous thing: she gained twenty-five pounds.
Here, in my head, is where I hear the phrase, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
It was a few years again, when I heard rumblings she was “too thin,” perhaps even anorexic.
It got me thinking, for Lady Gaga, what’s message? What exactly IS that “right weight?”
Aren’t we still, celebrity by celebrity, person by person, demanding a “right (perfect) weight” standard which is elusive, impossible to achieve, let alone, maintain?
I hear those words not just from my childhood, but for us at large today. It’s a whisper; it’s a scream. It’s a snarky remark. But somewhere, those words linger, don’t they?
Again, I trot out good ole’
Song of Solomon 2:14…
“O my dove…let me see your form…for your form is lovely.”
Form. Whatever it is, whatever size and shape it is. God is not confining it to a limited definition. Why are we?
Words are powerful, healing or deadly because they are ideas. And, whether or not “right weight” is audible, its message and influence are still strong. We have the idea there is such a thing as “right weight” and we spend our entire lives chasing it and even, perhaps, hating ourselves.
This was not what God created our forms to be.
Copyright © 2013 by Sheryle Cruse
Recently, Lady Gaga has made waves about body image and her struggles with eating disorders in the latest Glamour magazine.
“I always have been [conflicted about my body]," And some days are better than others, you know? Some days I feel fantastic. Today’s good. [But] at the end of the day, I’m a tortured soul."
Known as quite the visual recording artist, we’ve seen some of her creations: the meat dress, the alien egg and the Joan of Arc look.
But regardless of how many artistic visual expressions she puts out there, insecurity is still a painful reality. Like a lot of us out there, struggling with eating disorders, Lady Gaga was once bullied. And you just need to look at your nearest gossip magazine to read how she’s scrutinized. Last summer, tongues went wagging as she did, supposedly, the most outrageous thing: she gained twenty-five pounds.
Here, in my head, is where I hear the phrase, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
It was a few years again, when I heard rumblings she was “too thin,” perhaps even anorexic.
It got me thinking, for Lady Gaga, what’s message? What exactly IS that “right weight?”
Aren’t we still, celebrity by celebrity, person by person, demanding a “right (perfect) weight” standard which is elusive, impossible to achieve, let alone, maintain?
I hear those words not just from my childhood, but for us at large today. It’s a whisper; it’s a scream. It’s a snarky remark. But somewhere, those words linger, don’t they?
Again, I trot out good ole’ Song of Solomon 2:14…
“O my dove…let me see your form…for your form is lovely.”
Form. Whatever it is, whatever size and shape it is. God is not confining it to a limited definition. Why are we?
Words are powerful, healing or deadly because they are ideas. And, whether or not “right weight” is audible, its message and influence are still strong. We have the idea there is such a thing as “right weight” and we spend our entire lives chasing it and even, perhaps, hating ourselves.
This was not what God created our forms to be.
Copyright © 2013 by Sheryle Cruse
No comments:
Post a Comment