rant and then run

Okay, maybe it was a bad idea to post a picture of Lindsay Lohan; every time I look at it my gag reflexes act up. Could be the stretchy pants (leotard?). I don't want you to vom when you click on my page.

But I posted that picture for a reason. If you've lived through the past decade and are under 30, you know why. Otherwise, let me fill you in: about five years ago, Lindsay starred in a delightful Tina Fey comedy called Mean Girls, in which she looked doe-eyed, glowing, and healthy. Fast forward a couple years, add some fame and booze and drugs, and you have the present stick-figured, crispy-orange version of Lindsay that so often graces our tabloids. This trend is all too common in Hollywood, trading in curves for angles to please the cameras or the public or most likely, the angry gold-chain clad Hollywood gods who sit in LA offices grunting and banging on tummy-tuck skin drums. Who are probably fat themselves.

As much pressure as this is for actresses and models and the like, it doesn't stop with them. Thanks to E! and VH1, we are a celebrity obsessed nation, and will do anything to look like them, as unrealistic as it may be. (News flash: they have personal trainers to monitor every move and every morsel. Do you?) Which is why I was particularly upset when I saw this ongoing article in Health magazine about an actress trying to shed her baby weight. She is 5' 5.5". Her starting weight was 130 pounds, and her goal was to get down to 115.

Go to a BMI website. Enter her stats and you'll find out that 130 puts her score at 21.5; 3 points above underweight, 3.5 points below overweight. Read: average. Normal weight. In the middle. Already healthy.

Now plug in 115 pounds, and you'll find that she wants her BMI to get down to 18.8, 0.3 of a point above underweight. Nearing the danger zone.

When I flipped to this article one day at work, I jumped up and waved it in front of the face of every girl/woman in the office, trying to find someone as vehemently disturbed as I was. (They thought it was ridiculous, but not to the eye-bugging, finger-jabbing extent I did.) In a magazine that is meant for the general public, they are blatantly telling women: Oh hey, you're healthy? According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal government, the highest power in the land? Well, guess what, not good enough. Watch us glorify this woman getting borderline undernourished and then go pacify your tears with Chubby Hubby because you will never be as good as her.

So Health magazine lost one reader, like they care. They have an agenda to fill, this whole nation has an agenda to fill, one based primarily on images and false perceptions. But that's not mine, and, hopefully, not yours.

I think before one can embrace a truly natural, healthy, holistic lifestyle, it's vital to shed these notions of not being good enough, skinny enough, attractive enough-- all the artificial baggage that is dumped on a woman by society as soon as she's old enough to grow boobs. When I became a teenager, I wasted two foolish years with my fingers down my throat because I somehow knew I could never be happy if I didn't get skinny. I finally got grossed out by this and joined cross country instead. I wasn't that fast, but running made me feel alive. And after a year, I got down to 135 pounds. Then at practice one day my coach referred to me and one of my friends as "the big girls" on the team, which was true, relative to the gazelle-like top-ranked girls. I quit.

This past summer, five years later, I started running again. For me. Not to win a race, not to lose weight, but to remember how it feels to hear the blood pumping through my veins.