Everyone knows that many women throughout the Western world struggle every day, throughout the day, with their weights. A recent study from Great Britain, though, puts the problem in perhaps the most provocative terms possible.
According to an article from the Times Online, a survey of 5,000 women in England found that the average woman worries about her weight every 15 minutes.
That's only half of the equation, though. What that means is that women think more about their weight than men think about sex, the article said. The thought going through every man's mind right now is something along the lines of "Dear, God."
Yes, my brothers in maleness, they actually think about their bodies more than we do.
The study also determined many other interesting, troubling facts. While the average woman thinks about her body every 15 minutes, approximately 29 percent think about it every waking moment. Women's average desired weight loss was 19 pounds, according to the article, and 90 percent of the women surveyed admitted to dieting. Seventy percent claimed their lives would be greatly improved by having better bodies.
Frankly, these kinds of numbers - which are no doubt equivalent to the United States' numbers - are horrifying. The case could be made quite easily that these figures are akin to a national psychological health epidemic.
So how does society deal with this problem? Is it something that can be dealt with beyond the individual level?
Before considering how this problem could be approached, a certain distinction needs to be made on an important issue: There is a significant portion of the female - and the male - population that has every reason to be concerned with weight and body shape. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you," so to speak.
In order to make this distinction, there need to be objective, easily-understood standards about what makes for a satisfactory, healthy weight. I envision a program being developed to coordinate cooperation between government health agencies and HMOs. What if individuals were given incentives to reach certain weight, health and fitness levels? If the government can provide benefits for those who choose to marry, it should be able to reward those who choose to be in shape.
Here's a proposal: What if in exchange for meeting certain fitness requirements - time it takes to run a mile, number of pushups in a minute and so on - individuals could receive tax breaks or other incentives? What if employers got in on the action, too? It is wholly within the interests of the business owners and stockholders to have a workforce that is as healthy and as fit as possible. A healthier, more energetic workforce would be more productive and less likely to miss work because of illness.
Bottom line: It is within the means of the government to develop a program that can make fitness more of a core value in American life.
Again, though, that's still only addressing half the problem. The other half is the question of how we go about convincing a fairly sizable group of women that they're not fat and that they don't need to worry about their weights as much as they do.
There is not an easy way to reverse the psychological pain shared every day by women all over the world. As men, all we can do is stand back and continually let them know how beautiful they are to us.
This is a mission that will need to be taken up by women. It must be a rebellion, a revolution of thought, a passionate rejection of the mental virus that dubs them "fat" and "unattractive." It will take strong leaders, but it can be done, and I pray the women of this country embark on that mission immediately.
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