Who has the dieting craze hit hardest?
As a young woman in college I argue that it is me who has been affected most by the American dieting obsession. Young college women age 20-24, that's my thesis. College is a time that many young women experience weight gain as a result of stress, development of unhealthy eating habbits or perhaps the lack of home cooked meals many students face. Personally, it was a complete social climate change that hurdled me towards the weight obsession.
I moved from Portland, Oregon having been a fairly confident young woman with an ambitious career plan. I admit, I'm still that same young woman with a drive to succeed . . .but somewhere in between I let the importance of image override who I was. Entering freshman year of college I was completely shocked to find girls who (despite being thin) were following some fort of diet plan. These young women felt compeled to "dress the part," of the orange county female on a daily basis. This meant . .wearing high heels to an eight a.m. class, socializing on a nightly basis in the dormitories and placing a higher importance on their looks than on their coursework. Despite their obvious ridiculousness . . . I got the urge to get hot. By get hot I mean lose weight, get my hair done, buy new clothes and put makeup on just to go eat at the cafeteria!
This is where my dieting quest probably began. What came after my freshman year was nothing but weight gain, weight loss and no happy medium. The materialism overload didn't stick with me. It took for me a realization that this society is merely a bubble, not a legitmate representation of society as a whole, to get over it.
Luckily for me Chapman university population is not comparable to the real world. White, thin, upper middle-class, prada owning, beamer drivers?
Not exactly what one would expect of a 20 year old female But, in the OC its typical. Places such as orange county, where plastic surgeries are commonplace and shows such as laguna beach represent youth, are more hurtful than encouraging. It is embarassing when my friends from home equate the television show The OC with where I go to school.
My roommate grew up on a street in Mission Viejo where the "stay-at-home mothers all have their boobs done." So contrary to my street in northeast Portland, Oregon, where moms and dads work and we only laugh about fake boobs. Perhaps materialistic societies are a worser enemy than are the diet schemes which appease them.
I have met more dieters in this area than I ever met at home . . . and no one is any fatter in Oregon. Lets get our priorities straight please.