Skinny Girl Backlash and Yay! Learning

Hello all!

Happy day after Cinco de Mayo! Seis de Mayo! Last night, we got together with friends to have a homemade dinner and catch up on MadMen. We were two episodes behind! OH NO! Since yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, we decided to do a healthy(-ish) Mexican style dinner. So, we made a taco bar complete with chicken, steak, black beans and Spanish rice..MMM.. muy delicioso! My contribution was to try and make a healthier version of a South American dessert. I decided on churros only because we already had all of the ingredients in our house : ) It was the weekend, I had already gone to the store - don't judge me.  I found a healthier version that wasn't deep fried but instead baked and used cooking spray instead of butter on the outside to make the brown sugar and cinnamon stick.

3 eggs, 1.5 cups flour, 4 tbsp melted butter,  2tsp baking powder, 1/2 cup sugar, vanilla and bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Spray with cooking spray and roll in cinnamon and sugar.

The episode of MadMen hit home with an article that I read last week that I wanted to share with all of you. H&M recently released their bathing suit collection and decided that they were going to use regular sized or "plus-sized" (as they are called in the modeling world) women. The article discussed a new trend of using normal sized people and mannequins to model clothes! Is this the beginning of the actual backlash against the ridiculously skinny women in entertainment roles? MadMen tied in with the character Joan, played by Christina Hendricks, getting much more screen time lately as a strong partner in the advertising agency. Christina is known for being an advocate of her curves and the men don't seem to mind either!

Today is the 1st day of my online class at Vanderbilt about Nutrition and Healthy Eating. I am very excited to start this class and the 1st few videos were great giving some great information and basic statistics on health in the United States. The most interesting piece of information that I took from the 1st videos was that 90% of the American public, when surveyed, said that they were either healthy or very healthy. However, the statistics for diabetes, cancer, heart disease and obesity in the United States would say much differently. The perception of health isn't the same as actually being healthy. You can convince yourself through justification that a donut isn't THAT bad for you but at the end of the day, your body doesn't care, it will react and process it in the same way whether you convinced yourself or not. So that is an interesting little factoid isn't it? Perhaps some of the initial problem in the United States with our health problems are that most people don't believe that they are part of the problem!  Mind blown!

Comment below and give me your thoughts - Do you see any movement towards healthier shaped women in entertainment? Did you watch MadMen? How did you celebrate Cinco de Mayo?

Does Vanderbilt Have Chunky Cheerleaders?

Good morning all,

I am very excited today because I received my first email from Vanderbilt University about the course I am taking that starts on the 6th! Many of the Ivy league and larger universities in the US have started to offer free/non-credit classes online and I am taking "Nutrition, Health and Lifestyles: Issues and Insights" from Vanderbilt online! We got our first assignment for the class which is to track our energy intake and outflow for 3 days in a row. We are supposed to review portion sizes too! I was happy that this was the 1st assignment because its something I already do anyway with MyFitnessPal application on my phone - so easy! I am passing this class already! : )

I love that this class is being offered and at no cost because I have visited the topic before on this blog that it is SO HARD to be healthy if you aren't educated on what you should be doing. I think the worst part of the lack of nutritional education is that its not that the information is right in front of your face and you are choosing to not learn about it, its that there are companies that are purposefully misleading you to be uneducated. We have all heard of the horrors of Monsanto and their grip on the powers that be but that's a blog for another day. If you want to check out some of the free courses offered, visit this site. https://www.coursera.org/

So now, let's make the leap from College courses to college sports, and then another leap from sports to those that cheer for sports. Have you all heard of the CBS sports blogger that wrote about the "chunky NBA cheerleader"? The girl looks like this.

 

The blogger was fired for making the statement that she was "too chunky" to perform but I fear that the blogger wasn't fired for making a statement that has no merit or real purpose. Someones weight is NOT news. Instead, the blogger was fired to save face because of the backlash. I just want to know what kind of world it is when a beautiful, natural, active girl is told that she is too chunky to perform. Does anyone think that the guys watching that game gave a crap? The truth is that most men prefer women with shape and curve - it is the women that put the unnaturally skinny stereotype on women, not men.

Since I am getting married, I have noticed that I am bombarded with things telling me that I should be trying to "get in shape" for my wedding day. I should be attending "bridal bootcamp" classes, doing cleanses for my skin and water weight and whatnot. The wedding site The Knot even has a timeline for helping you plan your wedding and in the 9-12 months out category, there is a check box for "Start eating healthy and getting in shape for your wedding day." This perturbed me a little bit and this is why - You are ASSUMING that I am unhappy with my weight and health and that obviously, I couldn't possibly be happy on my wedding day without losing some pounds. Maybe this is me being hyper sensitive to this but all I can think is, my fiance didn't fall in love with a 110 pound girl, he fell in love with me as I am. So why on the biggest day of our lives together would I try to change myself and not look like the healthy girl he's dated for 4 years? Again, its a pressure that women put on themselves or other women to look flawless, its not something that the groom cares about.

 

 

These are the photos that we are shown to be a "beautiful bride" and this woman is awfully underweight. If I walked down the aisle like this, I would hope that my fiance would hand me a turkey burger at the end.

 

MMMMM...