Body Image

Sadly, body image plays an important role in today’s society.  It’s a person’s perception of their physical appearance based on what they learn is appealing and attractive, what they are told, and hear from the people that surround them. I for instance, have grown up in a world where if you are tall, tan, and thin, you are beautiful and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has grown up with these opinions and thoughts “preached.” A long time ago beautiful was determined by how fat you were because if you were fat, you ate well, which means you were wealthy and that was what everyone was trying to find in their potential “soul mate.” People judge one another first by their appearance then by personality. Those who judge first by the appearance of another don’t get to truly find out who and what type of person it is that they are judging because they don’t even want to take the time. I fully agree and back up the author of “How Far Will We Go to Change Our Body Image?”. After growing up, always hearing I was too fat I’d look pretty if i lost some weight, not only by peers but by family members as well, I went through a stage where I would see myself in the mirror and wasn’t happy, see people out at the beach with their tiny bikini bodies, and just felt nothing but sadness. Some girls do go to extreme measures to lose weight to look like the models, advertisements, and latest trends, they see within the media causing some girls to become even more unhealthy then when they were overweight or what they thought was “too fat.” Truth is, no natural girl or guy has a perfect body. The author states that, “ Over-concern with the body image and shape can lead to restrictive dieting and unhealthy weight control methods which may lead to potentially dangerous disordered eating behaviors” (Croll 540). Be an individual, love your body, be confident at any weight, and if you want to lose some weight, lose it the healthy and safe way. 

The Environment

      Where I live in the south part of Fort Myers close to Estero, looking around the apartment complex that I live in, most of the pollution is being caused by the littering of bottles and cans throughout the parking lot and grassy areas of the complex. The Apartment complex that I live in is strictly college students with lenient security. The combination of the two just leads to uncontrolled parties and harm to our planet. The difficulty involved with eliminating the littering surrounding the buildings is that most drunk college students tend to be too irresponsible to clean up their mess or dispose of their bottles, cans, and other trash into a trash can. If one were to try to talk some sense into one of these students, they wouldn't get anywhere because most of the students simply don't care.
      Lately, there has been such a long waiting list to lease these apartments that the owner recently bought the untouched woodsy lot beside the complex thats full of animals and their homes to knock down and completely destroy so he can have more apartments built. Not only is destroying and the murder of these woods and animal's homes is cruel and but is also degrading the environment. The machines being used to cut down the trees and clean out the area are also causing a lot of air pollution. Unfortunately, there is not much one can do about the growth of society and the need to build more homes, but there is a more efficient way to build while minimizing the degradation and the pollution within the environment by saving areas to preserve the wildlife, not polluting and providing the animals a sanctuary to live in. Although some people simply don't care about the planet overall and just about the present time, there are others though who do care and do their part by recycling and helping save this planet. Every helping hand counts even the smallest performance of the prevention of pollution can make a difference. If those who cared more tried to branch out to at least one person a day and get them to lend a hand, it would have a big impact on our environment.

Handlebars

      Handlebars by The Flobots, isn't one of my favorite songs, but is one song that I know which has a shockingly deep meaning. The song is about two friends growing up and going down different paths of life. One decides to go into corporate and the other chooses a more innocent and free nature life. The friend who chooses corporate, soon begins to become corrupted with power and eventually becomes president. Whereas, the other friend who remains true to himself begins a rebellion against the other. Handlebars is a song about the nature of ambition and the drive for power, what a difference a small choice can make, and about two friends who started out the same and then took separate paths. 

      A basic human need is the need to feel powerful and capable. When the friends we young, they rode their bikes with no handlebars, resembling power over the bike. As they grew older and wiser, one needed more power over bigger things because he became to obsessed with it. His driving emotion from his intellect doesn't change as he grows older and remains unsophisticated. Near the end of the song, the corporate friend begins ordering his army to kill everyone who is in the rebellion. He realizes that it is getting out of his control and then the army kills his friend. Due to his friend's death, he realizes that one can't completely control an army and he then comes to his senses and is horrified of the things he has done. The corporate world is corrupting what was once a more innocent and overall free world. Every choice we make has an effect on our future, like the butterfly effect.

Handlebars Song by The Flobots