mystery: thigh gap

Well … I’ve always wanted a thigh gap. I’ve always wanted a thigh gap? What the hell IS a thigh gap? That was the questioned I asked my roommate two days ago when she told me about the latest fitness trend which she discovered on instagram. 

A thigh gap is the space between your thighs when you are standing straight up. (I give you guys the German translation so that I can make sure that it’s absolutely clear about what I’m talking: “Oberschenkellücke”)

To tell you the truth, I’ve never even thought about a thigh gap. It’s completely new to me. I didn’t know that it is desirable and the latest must-have for body-conscious young women. But I started to get curious what’s behind this trend and after checking out some tumblr websites on the internet, the thigh gap got my attention.

So I read that the young Englishwoman Alexa Chung, model and Londoner It-girl, is thought to personify the trend. Of course lots of other celebrities follow her example. 

So what should you know about the thigh gap?

It’s an impossible beauty standard. Not everyone can have one. In fact it depends on the natural shape of your body. Women who have child-bearing hips are clearly at an advantage. They have legs that are farther apart from one another, making the thigh gap easier to achieve. 

 

The fact that not everyone can have it creates dangerous problems. For many women, especially young girls, the gap equals thinness which means that they almost starve themselves to get it. It can become an obsession like all other beauty trends. 

I read the story of a 16year-old girl who nearly killed herself because she wanted the thigh gap so badly. She started to plaster her bedroom walls with photos of skinny thighs of celebrities such as Alexa Chung or Cara Delevingne. She used to spend every minute of the day obsessing over the size of her thighs. After some months she felt so weak because she lost so much weight that she had to be taken to hospital. The doctors told her that if she didn’t change her eating habits, she would die in 2 weeks. Can you believe that? Actually I can.

There are so many other shocking stories like this one but that doesn’t stop people from uploading pictures of their way too thin legs showing the thigh gap. It’s driving me crazy! I don’t want to know how many girls or fully grown women suffer each day because of these terrible photos. Why can’t we just stop to create an unhealthy ideal of beauty? It’s dangerous. There are so many beautiful women out there who are afraid to be proud of them because they don’t fit in a size zero. It’s ridiculous! 

Still I want to give you the chance to decide on your own whether you like the trend or not. Take a look at:

• FuckYeahThighGap
• thigh gap on tumblr

read more about the negative aspects:

• stories
• Do you have a thigh gap?

breast augmentation? no, no, no I mean reduction!!

Plastic surgery: medical operations to improve the appearance of a part of someone's body, either to repair an injury or to make the person more attractive 

Cosmetic surgery: medical operations that improve someone's appearance

These are the two definitions which can be found in the online MacMillan Dictionary. Today I want to point out that there is in fact a huge difference between cosmetic and plastic surgery. Cosmetic surgery constitutes a part of plastic surgery and aims at the improvement of someone’s appearance in order to make them more attractive. People undergoing such an operation haven’t suffered of an injury before. It’s the looks that motivate them. In contrary plastic surgery refers to necessary operations because you suffer. 

I want to draw the attention with this post to a topic which is less common in our society: breast reduction (Reduction mammoplasty).

I’m sure many of you have at least once in their life heard of some cases of breast augmentation. But have you ever thought about the opposite?

Let’s imagine a 20 year old student called Anny. She has an E-Cup, so a very large bra size. And she has never wanted to have such big breasts. 

When do you finally decide for a breast reduction?

I guess the most common problem for Anny is a damaged posture. The weight is enormous that she carries along with her. She has to always make sure that she stands straight and the best would be to practice some exercise improving her posture. But there comes a time when it’s simply not possible to fight the burden with normal exercise. Even the easiest sports like running can become too difficult for her. And that isn’t funny at all!
Second you shouldn’t forget the mental damages that can result out of it. Of course, especially the girls might think “Well, it’s not that hard to be admired by all the guys staring at your breasts!”. In fact for her it is! Anny suffers because of stupid comments; she suffers because she hates what lots of girls dream of. This problem should clearly be taken more seriously!

What do you have to do after you decide to undergo this procedure?

Well, Anny can do the first step and decide that she wants to have a reduction mammoplasty. But keep in mind that it is expensive. So she needs the support of her health insurance company. And that’s the point where it gets difficult. Bureaucracy for the world – at least in Austria.
First she consults her family doctor. He will write a referral to an orthopedist. There she has to do some tests to show that she really suffers of a damages posture. The next step is to make an appointment with the head of the health insurance company because he is the one who approves a subvention to her operation. Clearly he won’t do that with much pleasure so he’s playing God because he knows that he has all the power. If all of the certificates you have so far aren’t enough for him, you’re best making an appointment with a plastic surgeon at the LKH. If he proves that you really suffer because of the size of your breasts, even Mr. Wanna-be-God can’t refuse a subvention. 

How long until you are finally able to fulfill your dream?

Usually it’s one year to the operation. For two reasons:

1.  it’s not as important as urgent cases and the hospitals are generally crowded
   
2.  they want to make sure that you really want this and don’t jump off
   

Personally, I’m not too much in favor with cosmetic surgery. I believe that people are beautiful the way they were born. Usually nobody recognizes that your nose is “too big” or that you have too many wrinkles or whatever. Please feel comfortable the way you are. Cause you’re beautiful no matter what. And what’s really important for me: Age with dignity!! 

Nonetheless, I appreciate the state of medicine that makes it possible to help people who are suffering because of physical deformity or injuries. It’s awesome that there is a chance to make life easier for those people.

food art

While browsing the internet I found an amazing health & wellness blog called “the more you know”. Click here to check out the link to the blog. Maybe you want to have a look (:

I had a look at this blog and liked a lot of different topics. One of the labels is called “food art”. The pictures posted were amazing!!

Though I think it’s quite a controversial topic. I remember my grandma saying “You never play with food, you listening?!” Of course she is absolutely right. I’m not in favor with people using food as toys or allowing their children to throw it on the floor or simply waste it. That’s a no-go. I, myself, read a lot about the topic “food waste” for our food magazine and really got into that topic. So I clearly disapprove wastefulness.

But, I think there is a difference between “playing with food” and “food art”. Creating a master piece out of food so that your eyes can “eat” first doesn’t constitute something reprehensible for me.

Just look at these gorgeous pictures!!!

I believe it is a nice way to sharpen someone’s appetite on the condition that the food will be eaten, of course. 

And I came up with a bonus that goes along with art food, especially concerning fruits or vegetables. Children are easily attached to good looking things. It’s a nice idea to decorate healthy dishes in ways that children might appreciate. They find it interesting and will surly take a closer look at spinach or other “terrible” healthy food. So it might be a good way to draw children’s attention to eating healthy food. And everyone can do it! Also not so talented parents will be able to create a beautiful dish. All you need is a little imagination!

And I have to admit, I like it too (: If a dish is nicely decorated I can ignore the fact that there are some ingredients I might not like.

body satisfaction and self-esteem

“Some people like to call me cocky or arrogant, but I just think, ‘How dare you assume I should think less of myself?’ “. When I first read this quote a couple of minutes ago, I was overwhelmed by its honesty and courage. I bet none of you ever thought about it that way? At least I didn’t. We live in a world in which we are forced to become better and reach our limits. We are trained to fail because what we do is never good enough – there will always be anyone better than you. Encouragement has been pushed aside in our vocabulary by a stronger and more negative marked word called “discouragement”. I wonder how on earth anyone could actually believe that sad and depressed people achieve better results than happy and joyful ones. Nonetheless, that’s the story of our lives – isn’t it?

The easiest way to keep somebody under your control is to lower his/her self-esteem in any possible way. The media knows that principle quite well and uses it whenever it gets the chance. Where do I want to go with that? I want to draw a special focus on “body satisfaction”, its relationship to “self-esteem” and why it is so hard love and accept yourself in the 21^st century.

Body satisfaction has been defined in various ways, particularly in terms of body cathexis, body image, and weight satisfaction. Body-cathexis reflects how satisfied people are with specific aspects of their bodies, body image reflects how close a person’s actual shape is to their ideal shape, and weight satisfaction reflects how close a person’s actual weight is to their ideal.

One way to define Self-esteem: it is the “level of global regard one has for the self”, or how well a person “prizes, values, approves, or likes” him or herself.

I think the connection between these two terms is quite obvious. Self-esteem mostly depends on body satisfaction because we live in a “body focused” world. You have to have a perfect body to be called beautiful; at least that’s what so many people believe. Skinny is the best. And if you can’t fit the rule, you’re out. 

I don’t know who “invented” the concept of a perfect body and why it became so important to our society. I guess that’s what we like to call “a first world problem”. Can you believe that there are so many people out there avoiding food because they are in a beauty mania, while others suffer because they simply don’t have enough to eat? Well, try to explain to a 4 year old undernourished child in Africa or Asia why you refuse to eat that piece of chocolate and prefer to throw it away. Oh I beg you please, just give it a try and explain it. Gosh, I get so mad when I think of it!!

I don’t want to give you statistics or other stuff. I just want to give you my personal opinion. Nobody will ever reach perfection. We have to accept our body. We can shape it – of course. We can try to stay healthy – well that’s amazing. But we can’t force ourselves to reach unreachable goals. It’s simply not possible. Get that in your mind. Everyone is beautiful. And that’s not just a stupid sentence with no meaning. That’s maybe the honest one in life. We have to accept us. Perfection isn’t objective. It’s a subjective decision you have to make for yourself in order to gain the amount of self-esteem you deserve. And you deserve the highest amount!