Carson Kressley vs. Jason white
How to Look Good Naked…
…is the new show on Lifetime that features makeover host Carson Kressley from the old Queer eye for the Straight Guy show. On Friday Morning there were dozens of large women on 72nd St. handing out promotional DVD’s and I assume elsewhere around the city if not the country, unless they figured that the hottest bed of large women lived exclusively on the upper west side.
I just had to have one of those DVD’s because I was in mortal fear that Carson had somehow just appointed himself a Personal Trainer and that the slow decline our country is in had just gotten a turbo boost from a yahoo that had no business being in my business.
The DVD is playing on my laptop as I write this and I am pleased to find that he has not appointed himself the country’s new personal trainer. Actually the show is moving in the complete opposite direction but brings up the most WONDERFUL point.
The show is all about getting the larger women on the show to accept themselves as they are, to NOT hate their bodies (the show is happy to repeatedly report that 4 out of 5 women are dissatisfied with their bodies) and to find themselves beautiful and sexy.
Kressley does it with his trademark humor and lots of fashion tips and feel good about yourself advice. The woman featured in the promo copy gets very emotional when revealing her feelings about her life of self hatred. By the end of days of makeovers including hair and clothes, pep talks, and long looks in the mirror (something she doesn’t do as she possesses no full length mirrors in her house) she ends up in a photo shoot… naked.
So here we are at the wonderful point. This woman has undergone a significant transformation in how she feels about herself and stands on the street in front of a billboard of her naked self asking passersby how they feel about her. Mostly they think she is sexy and mostly she feels sexy.
She made no effort whatsoever to change they way she looks she only made an effort to accept the way she looks.
Is this the right path for you? Have you been on a diet your whole life? Have you lost every diet game you have ever played? When is it the right time to stop making an effort to change the way you look with a new diet or new weight loss regime and start concentrating on how you feel? Are they separate?
I love the point this show makes. And yet I hate it. Our culture has gradually inched closer and closer to just plain enjoying being fat and developing a support system for people who are fat. And before we go on let me just carefully explain where I fall on this line.
I am 100% committed to a person’s personal satisfaction. How you feel about yourself is everything. It is true in my practice and it is true in how I treat my clients and it is true in how I conduct my social life. I am no big fan of self haters. They are generally unpleasant to be around. I know. I have endured many years of self doubt and self hatred. But if you love yourself and it is true then you are a wonderful person to be around and how you feel about yourself is evident in your actions and reactions. Loving yourself is something I support whole heartedly.
But where the show and I divide is where I have always chosen to move through those feelings by seeking ways to improve the things that I hate about myself. And that is how I treat my business. If you are really hating yourself because you are not regularly working the three things you can control, what you eat and the two kinds of exercise you can do, then my solution is to set up a program for you that challenges you where you are at. And then it gets more challenging as you adapt. That is the essence of progressive resistance training, and the essence of effecting change that brings the deepest levels of satisfaction with ourselves and our bodies.
I am not a religious man but I have not gone through life without understanding the Serenity prayer (years of acting out my self hatred eventually led me to AA) and memorizing “The courage to change the things I can”.
So the question you get to answer is: Is it better to accept the things I CAN change or CHANGE the things I can change. The Serenity prayer also finishes with the affirmation to know the difference between that which must be accepted and that which can be changed.
How to Look Good naked the TV show suggests you accept yourself as you are.
Jason White the trainer suggests that if you want to look good naked you change that which you can if it will make you happier and in so doing you will do best by seeking out the best help and drinking gallons of courage every day. Scratch that. You don’t need gallons of courage you simply need determination, the right information, and the knowledge that you have much more power and self control than you think you do.
How do you feel about your body and which path are you following?
