The other day I saw this picture on a magazine and got me thinking about how obsessed we women get with weight and our body. Someone had the brilliant idea of making women think that if they are skinny or almost rachitic the world will be on their hands. They've made us believe that being skinny makes us perfect and, for that reason, millions of women around the world get obsessed with the image of perfection.
The funny thing about it is that it doesn't matter how much I disagree with that idea, at some point I ended up believing it and thought I needed to pay a visit to a nutritionist in order to lose some weight. I'm 1.7 mts tall, and I was really thin when I was younger but now, my adolescent years are gone; and after some years of not doing any sport, eating whatever I wanted, giving up smoking and hearing comments from stupid, superficial people about how much weight I've won in these past 4 year I've realized I wanted to lose some weight so I went to see a nutritionist and she told me I had to lose 10 kilos (that is about 22 pounds) to reach my "ideal" weight. She gave me a specific diet to follow and almost ordered me to do some sport at least twice a week.
Since I'm not a big fan of sports because of the clumsiness I've talked you about a hundred times before, I decided to try on some dancing lessons. I mean, one thing is to run, trip and fall while chasing an imaginary person on the treadmill, and another very different thing is to dance. How harmful could it be? Well, apparently, dancing is a deadly weapon to me.
One of my friends recommended me some zumba lessons (for those of you who had never taken one, it's a mixture of latin rhythms like merengue, salsa, cha cha, mambo, reggeaton, and others) and I decided to take them. The first day I went there not only I realized that I'm even clumsier than when I was younger, but also I'm completely uncoordinated. I mean, I always knew I was a uncoordinated, but not that bad. I tripped a thousand times, I confused the legs I had to move and also accidentally slapped a lady on her arm. In the mean time, I tried to do the cha cha steps and the mambo ones without falling flat on my ass or embarrassing myself even more. Oh, and let's not skip the fact that I was trying to catch my breath every two seconds because it seems that half of the time I was hyperventilating, not to mention that my face was getting red as a beet and also I was sweating like a pig. In the end, I left the class looking like a sweaty, clumsy mess and swore to God I was not coming back.
But, guess what? Two days later my friend practically dragged me to my own, personal hell again and, surprisingly, I was able to complete a full choreography without tripping, slapping or stepping on someonelse's feet... I was still uncoordinated, and my movements were completely ackward, but I felt I was Barishnikov's heiress.
Today was my 5th lesson and I'm able to say I'm improving. I'm still clumsy and uncoordinated, and I tend to hit people accidentally. Besides we've got a new classmate, a man, and he's way worse than me...
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Don't worry you'll get used to it. It just needs some time and you liking it :)
ReplyDeletethanks! =)
DeleteI started taking Tae Kwon Do several years ago. Had the same experience. I couldn't make it through a session without the feeling that my head was going to explode. I couldn't do the moves and had no coordination. After about a month I was able to make it through an entire session without a break and the coordination slowly came with time. Stick it out. You will be so proud of yourself.
ReplyDeleteI promise I'll continue doing it... It's still very soon, but my coordination issues are improving already lol
DeleteI think that's awesome, and I've heard Zumba is loads of fun!
ReplyDeleteI don't know why we feel the need to be thin and perfect. I agree with you, on principal, that it's a ridiculous idea, and yet I too feel I have to maintain a specific weight. We are bombarded on a daily basis by images of impossibly perfect women, and the saddest part of it is that we logically know the images have been altered, and yet we still feel the need to emulate. Strange, right? But as you pointed out, when you find something you enjoy, it ceases to become what you think you should be doing/look like, and becomes what you want.
Zumba it up, and good for you!
thanks for your comment!
DeleteYou should try zumba, it's really funny...and it's even funnier if you have clumsy/uncoordinated classmates like me lol
I remember some time ago I saw some pictures of Madonna before being altered and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The thing is that most people think that those pics were altered to make her look bad, when they actually show how a woman on her almost mid-fifties looks like... And yet, we still want to look like her altered pics when we reach our fifties. Yeah, that's crazy.