@ Serious: to be hones that bugs me too. Model skinny is unhealthy and obese is unhealthy - unhealthy should not be present as beauty nor encouraged as a life choice or "accept me as I am". On the guy side, besides the lack of attractiveness of a walking muscle bundle, I hate how primal brute force is being proposed as a desirable trait when it has little to no place in our society. "Must be powerful so big muscles rawr" is just so lame. You only need one click to lift the and down the banhammer, what's that musclemass gonna do for you besides eat nutrients your brain needed?
There are legit reasons to build up muscle, although certainly not to bodybuilder extents. However both men and women will do better from a health perspective if they lift weights and build *some* muscle. It has positive metabolic consequences among quite a few other benefits. On bodybuilders:
- Spoiler:
Bodybuilders take it to an extreme, although experienced ones know a surprising amount about health and nutrition. When I was researching about various thyroid medication options and their potential impact, I was a bit surprised to come across discussion of Diiodothyronine (T2) on a bodybuilder forum. It is popular belief in the medical community that only T3 and T4 are active, and that it is effective to give patients only T4...a belief that conflicts with literature. Interestingly, the bodybuilders *did* find literal medical journal articals supporting the impact of T2 on metabolism. They did something I would not do (IE turn into human guinea pigs) and take the stuff, and I even got to read some anecdotal discussion on which hormones were TSH-suppressive and whether people recovered after stopping. Fascinating, because actual research on that is scant.
Being a thyroid patient myself and thus having a very good reason to be interested in these hormones for basic dailly, I combined that anecdotal evidence + tons more + a very powerful double-blinded, randomized crossover study as justification for switching medications, and have seen considerable success in doing so (lost 10 pounds just from switching - I gained weight when I started on them, eating same #calories in both cases).
As a result, I can appreciate what they've done, providing a unique perspective for me by experimenting on themselves .
I think serious was referring to physical toughness with women vs men, IE "Can take more bludgeoning force and do more". That's a simple reality. Pain tolerance is another issue, and it varies by individual. Needless to say, I get tired of hearing women say "men don't know pain because they don't bear children" though. There are things (hemerrhoids, kidney stones, severe/mass burns) that are *not* unique to women and can easily hurt as much (or more, if medication is involved in one case but not the other). Having gone through a football practice many years ago while passing kidney stones, I know a thing or two about pain . Unfortunately, I don't think I'm ever going to forget that experience as long as I'm sane.
Society unfortunately has the ability to easily influence a child's mindset, and often negatively. We have scant evidence in many cases in terms of what kinds of shows ultimately have a positive or negative influence on a person's development. Things like spongebob are even arguably harmful; sure there isn't "using sexuality", but in turn it's commonly showing direspect and harmful behavior towards one's friends, not to mention glorifying stupidity. I say this, but I'm responsible for my nephews knowing how to play Gears of War X_X.
I often wonder at sheer social tendencies too. There are lots of activities that tend to be primarily female or male that have no apparent reason to be either. I have occasionally wondered what would happen if society simply trained gender roles in a reversed fashion for a generation, globally. I truly think you'd see "emotional" men with "traditional female roles" in that generation, and women who would refuse to cry regardless of how they felt (I've seen examples of both happening and the results already). People aren't that different I'd guess. It's truly amazing what conditioning can do to a person, and also how you can't escape it.
But the issue is indeed how you alter an institution that doesn't want to change, and how so. Societal bias is huge and unfortunately often difficult to separate from politics/media control, and political incentive is its own thread and then some.
Last edited by TheMeInTeam on Tue Aug 06, 2013 1:26 pm; edited 1 time in total