Social media just might be the most powerful tool since the lightsaber. In an instant, social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace can deliver viral blows (no more spam, Myspace!) and dumbfounding revelations (Facebook informed me about MJ's death first). Unlike the aforementioned lightsaber, I haven't figured out a way to simply turn it off. I am connected to Facebook and Twitter all day long, barraging my poor friends with witty albeit pointless status updates. It's okay- most of them are not really my friends- they're just facebook friends or, as I affectionately deem them, "People I Like Spy On And Pass Absurd Judgments On Because I Can."
Now, different people use the force of Facebook in different ways. I find, though, that you can usually divide facebook users into 2 categories: the oversharers and the image makers. The oversharers are the ones who post a gazillion pictures of their offspring (if I see one more picture of a naked baby in a bathtub, I am calling DCFS!)or talk about their medical problems, love for The Jersey Shore, or their divorces. I have a strong affinity for oversharers as I am one myself (that status update about my sweat flying into the face of the man on the Stairmaster next to me- DEFINITELY an overshare!). Image makers, though, just piss me off. They are the girls or guys constantly projecting these images of contentment, flooding Facebook with syrupy sweet status updates about their husbands (no doubt induced by Ambien), and posting pics of their perfect lives with their perfect homes and perfect jobs. Blah, blah. I hate them. I do. I am not facebook friends with many image-makers but I am friends with too many oversharers to count.
One such oversharer is a dear friend (like, a real friend, not just of the Facebook variety), who constantly posts status updates, berating her body and calling herself a fatty. These status updates are invariably met with protests from her friends who remind her that A. she is not fat and B. she is beautiful. I don't know why my friend posts her feelings of self-doubt on the Internet, but when I see these updates, it makes me sad. When I confronted her about her facebook self-loathing updates, she said that she knows she is not really fat but that she writes about it so that she won't become fat. She explained that if she calls herself fat, she will protect herself from "the fat".
Although I didn't understand her logic, I was fascinated by her explanation. Does talking about fat (or, in her case, fat she doesn't have) make you thinner? Does the constant threat of chub keep one inspired to work out and choose yogurt over ice cream? Had my friend found the secret for weight loss management? Surely that can't be good for anyone's body esteem, I thought.
A few days after our chat, I was shocked to see her latest Facebook status update. She had posted a message declaring that she wasn't worrying about her weight until the end of the summer. Shocked, I called her and praised her for ending her Facebook Fatty declarations. She shrugged off my praise and said that she decided to enjoy these last few weeks of summer instead of peppering her page with fatty statuses.
The bottom line is, we can only worry so much about maintaining our weight loss. When it consumes our lives (or our status updates) than perhaps, we've taken it too far.
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'She explained that if she calls herself fat, she will protect herself from "the fat".'
That seems to make plenty of sense. Remember that the essence of a lot of magic since antiquity has been to invoke the true name of a thing and thereby gain control of it. Plus with the facebooks, your friend can have her friends join in the mantra and by repeating and warding off "the fat".