Just me, or are women not eating these days?

I can’t seem to remember how many times I’ve heard the phrase “Mischa Barton is so hot”, or “man, Lindsay Lohan is fucking sexy”. What? What the hell is wrong with you people? Only a blind, deaf, and dumb retarded albino could not realize that those women have eating disorders. Those 95 pound celebrities are not beautiful, in fact, they should disgust you. Conditions such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia are becoming more and more widespread and all the young, horny male can do is to encourage the problem. . On the opposite end of the spectrum, many men become obsessed with being muscular, and therefore resort to dangerous diets and heavy steroid use. This cultural focus on appearance is what’s wrong in the world.

Recent research has suggested that close to 30% of young female Canadians suffer from eating disorders and the figure is only rising. 80% of non-afflicted females are believed to be at risk of developing an eating disorder sometime in the future due to the ever increasing societal fixation on weight. Eating disorders can, and frequently do, kill. The recovery process takes years and most sufferers never fully recover from their ordeal. It is fast becoming a vicious cycle; how can one recover from something like anorexia when society wants them to look like skeletons? We think dying is sexually appealing, ain’t that a bitch?

Somehow, men expect women to have slim stomachs, giant breasts, and long legs. Oh yeah, that is completely reasonable! How far have we fallen when every woman aspires to look like a porn star? It is utterly unfeasible and frankly we men should be ashamed of ourselves. Now, of course not every woman is troubled by such pressures, many could care less. It can not ignored, however, that far too many women are being affected by the need to look a certain way, and are willing to resort to drastic measures to achieve it. Does it appear to anybody that maybe our perception of what is beautiful is becoming something of a paradox? We believe that eating disorders are horrible, but yet the only way for most women (and some men) to achieve the standard we want are to starve themselves or go under the Surgeon’s knife. Studies have discovered that young women fear becoming fat more than nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents!

I’m sure a lot of you are aware of “roid monkeys”. Come on, you’ve all seen them. Pardon me, but I find that notion that one has to eat steak every day, chug back creatine, and shoot Mexican steroids in your ass cheek only a wee bit too much just to have those big, useless arms you’ve always wanted. Ask any one of those guys, and they say they do what they do to get chicks. It’s either that or because they want to “hold their own in a fight”. What? So you endanger your life just so you can go to Nicky Z’s on a Saturday night, pick up a pink haired trailer park girl named Crystal, and wake up Sunday with a bad case of the clap? That does not sound even remotely appealing.

Of course, this increasingly important societal concern of weight and physical appearance was not a political issue during the very recent election. It should have been, it is a massive health problem that needs to be addressed quickly. Like the zillion other “Reality Check” columns around the world this one is aimed at helping you think through the surface of an issue. Please remember that the next time you see an attractive woman at Dolan’s Pub, try to think what she may go through in order to look the way she does. And that my friends is not pretty at all.