Looks, diets and bone removal
When I first moved to L.A., I couldn’t grasp why people cared
so much about how they looked and all the effort they put into healthy eating
habits. It seemed like a lot of unnecessary work. I was not going to let myself
get influenced by the constant media propaganda of what women were supposed to
look like. Perfect hair. Perfect teeth. Perfect nails. Perfect body. To me, the
women all looked the same – an exaggerated version of themselves somewhere
between a Barbie and a blow-up doll. Big boobs, big lips, tight butt, tiny
waist. I thought they were crazy, unoriginal and unauthentic. I soon learned
that authenticity was not a concern for Angelinos. Fake was accepted and often even
expected.
However, over time, I started to feel pressured from all sides. I never
noticed the flood of images of
‘perfectionism’ and advertising on how to achieve this perfectionism
before but suddenly they were everywhere. Weight-loss programs. Weight-loss pills.
Organic juices. Better workouts in $100 yoga pants. Ads for yoga retreats to
find your inner beauty while shaping the outside. The Atkins Diet. The low carb
diet. The no carb diet. Weightwatchers.
Jenny Craig. The soup diet. The fruit
diet. Diets. Diets. Diets. I tried to follow a Slim Fast meal plan once. For
breakfast: a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. For lunch: a Slim Fast
chocolate shake and an apple. For dinner: a Slim Fast strawberry shake and a yogurt. I went to bed insanely hungry. The next morning, I felt queasy. I got
up and made my morning coffee, which was part of the diet plan. I took one sip
and ran to the bathroom to throw up. That was the end of my protein shake diet.
I was appalled at how shameless the diet industry was. One diet plan ‘provider’
used the terror attacks of 9/11 to make a kindergartener realize that if
another attack came, she will not be able to help the kids because she was
obese. So following their diet plan, she lost x-amount of pounds in fear of
another 9/11. For the kids. Of course.
I also started becoming more aware of all the beauty trends
too. My neighbor was obsessing over antioxidants. I still don’t know what the
hell those are. But that was one of the non-invasive trends – or fads – of the
time. It got weirder and outright dangerous with other trends. The most
perplexing one in my opinion was related to footwear. Around 2004-2007, it was
trendy to wear very narrow and pointed shoes. So narrow in fact, that most
normal feet didn’t fit in these shoes unless you were sitting all the time with
no pressure on the foot. Plastic surgery was prevalent in L.A. and was naturally offering a solution for this
problem as well. And this was when plastic surgery took a turn for the scary.
Plastic surgeons started offering surgeries to remove bones from your toes so
you can fit the narrow stilettos. Are you serious? It just seemed insane to do
that. But apparently not in L.A. There was no public outcry. However, as far as
I was aware, the trend did not catch on. Rare signs of sanity in this town.
Comments