Let's Just Stop With the Unrealistic Memes Already

The comments in Kim's post yesterday mentioned the whole "Strong is the new skinny" campaign.  I always liked the idea of encouraging women to work out to be strong rather than just for purposes of weight loss, but a good point came up that this campaign puts down legitimately skinny people.  I was taken aback, because as someone who has spent their entire adult life being overweight, at times even obese, I guess I never even considered this side of things.  Many women I know now, or girls that I was friends with growing up, have aspired to be "skinny" at some point in their lives.  So it never occurred to me that those who just naturally are may feel some way about campaigns like this.

I'll admit, when I was younger, I definitely wanted to be skinny.  I remember cutting out pictures of bikinis that I liked in catalogs and hanging them up on my bulletin board in high school as a goal for me someday.  Ah, someday. But I never had a concrete plan of how to get there, and just wanting something doesn't make it happen.  I'm long past those days, and being skinny isn't something that I'm working toward.  It's also something that will likely never happen for me.  I apparently don't have the bone structure or genetic make-up of a skinny person, proven by the fact that there's not really many skinny people in my family.  This is okay.  I really do just want to be healthy and fit.  I'd be happy, for example, to be a size 12 and have a little muscle, and be constantly amazed by the things that my body can do.  Oh wait, that's actually where I'm at.  So I guess I'm pretty happy with myself.

I know a lot of us are always working hard and seemingly always training, but I hope that there some of you reading this that are happy with where you're at right now.  But where are the memes representing that? Or works in progress? An article I read this morning claiming that "Fitspo Sucks" made me think about the contradiction between the messages of so-called fitspiration, and the memes themselves.  Basically it's a bunch of motivational slogans and quotes, which could be helpful if, perhaps, accompanied by pictures of real women. The author says "Women use it to remind themselves that they are not good enough. I mean, I’ve never seen a fitspo photo of someone with 30lbs to lose. That wouldn’t be nearly as motivating, even if she looked active, healthy, and happy."  I think this is a pretty important point. I catch glimpses of myself in the mirror when I'm taking a class at my gym, and I think I look pretty badass, but that's not an image to aspire to, since I'm above average sized and have some fat on me. I could be wrong, but I get the sense that a lot of these are pictures of either professional athletes or models.  Here's a few to consider:

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That's a great message, isn't it?  But it implies that all I really need to do to have a rockin' body like this is believe in myself.  Um, not quite.

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I find an hour for fitness almost every day.  I think I need more hours.

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Again, a great quote to think about (and even the title of a blog authored by a WRCE member), but I'm pretty sure this chick has done more than a few crunches to get these abs.

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In this case, apparently what we all want is to look like a Victoria's Secret model.

I guess I don't see any of these memes as being motivating for me, because I can't really relate to any of these women.  And to tie back to the beginning of this post, perhaps skinny people can't relate to some of these images either.  One could argue that the fitspo memes are shaming us into thinking this is the image that we should all be working for; that zero body fat and rock-hard abs are what we should all want and feel that we deserve. Don't get me wrong, I know that some women can and do look like this.  But it just isn't realistic and attainable for everyone and I think constantly seeing these memes could lead to a lot of unrealistic goals, which sets people up for either failure or some really unhealthy habits and attitudes.

What do you think about "strong is the new skinny" and fitspiration?  Should I just make my own damn memes?

Hey, but not all motivational memes are bad:

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