In a recent article by Alex Blimes, and an editorial by Priya Tanna, both tom tom(ed) about women' obsession with their body's thin or thickness. K personally likes her voluptuous self - there are only passages in her silhouette that she'd like to nip and tuck. The clothes otherwise look stupid and the images look swollen.
Returning to Blimes and Tanna - 'fit' is better than 'fat', which is better than 'thin'. At the gym, men take to Narcissus, they stare, check-out, adore, pull-in their paunches and reflect on how they can beat that bulge. Women, on the other hand, are removed from the flashing mirrors, in the oblivion of the nooks, sweating silently, not wanting their lard to jiggle in public view, as they push themselves to run for that another minute.
K is unsure if men are less conscious of their shape than women. She knows for a fact that they appreciate themselves a little more than women - but that again is a sweeping generalization.
On a similar note, the pendulum is now swinging to celebrating 'full-bodied' women. Twiggy, Moss, Jolie, Kapoor are suddenly not in vogue. Varushka, Bellucci and their likes are! It's the after effect of food consumerism. The linear movement of time demands that we now direct our vision to the clothes rack, skin firming lotions, Herbal life, Masters in Yoga and a cross-trainer.
Women blame men for their shape, men blame the mind of a woman. Emotional binges, pill poppers, hunger curbing chimneys or carrot chewing goats - all look for an affirmation that they are not sure they'd be happy with in the long run (if there is one).
Men' competition is not with other Alpha males, it's with Hercules. It's with the power to make a woman feel petite and another man a limp.
The obsession with shape was always there and it shall remain. Voluptuous/ curvaceous , hour glass, slim, athletic. We, humans, have a tendency to move in circles, in our heads and our evolution. Reading into things - Shape bespeaks a mental fantasy of a perfection, it is not necessarily the bearers', though, it would like to be. Its the new power over every thing that is yours.
K believes that the body, like the mind is a temple of sensuous enjoyment. It is there to be used, abused, loved, hated and lived-in, not with. Then whether it's the corset that's sculpting you or the surgeon's knife, the burnt webbed feet or the implanted steel scales. It's the shape that your mind wants to define its mood in.
Conclusions will be averted this time. Epicureans do not complain against Bacchus.
