James McCollum
Professor Michael Benton
Eng 102
23 August 2011
Trim the Fat
“Be who you are. That’s actually an attainable goal.” Greta Christina hit the nail on the head with this one. Her article on alternet.org entitled “Wealthy, Handsome, Strong, Packing Endless Hard-ons: The Impossible Ideals Men Are Expected to Meet” was a very insightful read. It was a nice change to hear a little pro-male talk from a woman; especially one that acknowledges a problem as heavy as image issues. And according to this article, men suffer from body image issues (and a plethora of others) just as frequently as women do.
Being involved in a fighting sport myself, the idea of cutting weight that Christina addressed in this article was nothing foreign to me. It’s not uncommon for my teammates to transform their eating habits 6-8 weeks before a fight. We start by eating lean; meat, veggies, and very complex carbohydrates. This gets the body prepared for the rigorous few weeks of carb-cutting that comes a couple of weeks before a fight. This drastic reduction in carbohydrate intake will shed pounds like Al Roaker after his gastric bypass surgery. The idea is to stay as big as you can before a fight, cut down to the desired weight, and then rehydrate and replenish the body the night after you’ve weighed in. This will often times result in a fighting weight that is 15-20 pounds heavier than what a fighter weighs in at the day before. Yes, it’s possible to put on 20 pounds in one day; I’ve been witness to it countless times over.
What is impossible to do, however; is to achieve the physique of the men seen on the covers of fitness magazines. The difference between the hell that these models put themselves through and what many fighters endure is not all that different. In both situations, the subjects are attempting to achieve an ideal weight or appearance in a short time for one to two days. Before and after these events it’s just general fitness maintenance. The difference is seen in the psychology behind the dieting and weight loss. According to Christina’s article, “The image being sold is an exaggerated, extreme, idealized extreme of hyper-masculinity.” In a nutshell, Christina explains that current societal ideals of the male physique have changed drastically. Chris Bell’s documentary “Bigger, Stronger, Faster” touches on this very topic. The popular action figure G.I. Joe is used as an example here. The man being interviewed shows that as the common conception of what the male physique should be has changed, so have popular toys our children play with. The original version was a slim, but fit hero. The current model sports a huge chest, bulging arms, and an 8-pack. Where the fighter is attempting a drastic cut in weight to meet a certain weight requirement, the model is helping to promote this skewed vision of attainable male physique.
After reading the majority of the article I began to seriously question how big of a hand media and advertising has in all of this. At the end of the day, if a company influences someone to adopt malnourishment and eating disorders as a means of “healthy living’, they’re still making the money. Countless numbers of individuals will continue to purchase the magazines’, fitness equipment, and diet plans and the companies promoting this vision of physical perfection could care less what it does to the masses. It’s our job as those individuals to educate ourselves on the reality of this situation, and become better informed on nutrition and fitness. We can no longer rely on the media to tell us how to look and feel. Being a healthy person is up to the individual and it is the responsibility of that person alone- not advertisements or strange social norms- to attain that healthiness.
Works Cited
Bigger Stronger Faster. Dir. Chris bell. Perf. Mark Bell, Mike Bell, et al. Chris Bell. 2008.
Christina, Gerta. "AlterNet." 20 June 2011. www.alternet.org. 23 August 2011 <http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/151344/wealthy%2C_handsome%2C_strong%2C_and_with_endless_hard-ons%3A_the_impossible_ideals_men_are_expected_to_meet/?page=entire>.
