Unpopular Opinion: Your Body Isn’t Beautiful
People say that what makes us unique makes us beautiful. That may be true, but the things we all have in common make us disgusting. Take intestines for example. They’re basically just giant worms. When was the last time you looked down at the sidewalk after a rainstorm, saw that baked noodle writhing desperately as it tried to find some soil to burrow into, and thought to yourself “wow, that lil’ guy is really handsome.” Maybe over time, surgeons develop an appreciation for the aesthetics of tissue and organs, but most of us don’t. And, if you ask me, surgeons are kind of creepy anyway. I mean, they get paid big bucks to slice us open and fuck around with our insides. Do they enjoy it? I would feel much better knowing they were just doing it for the money. Most of them probably are, but the ones who do it for “other reasons” are total sociopaths.
The Depth of Ugly
Speaking of sociopaths, there’s a whole movie genre called “horror,” which exists solely for the purpose of scaring people, and they do that primarily by showing us what’s underneath our skin. Think that’s a coincidence? If our bodies weren’t totally revolting, Wes Craven wouldn’t have had such a successful movie career. Deep down, we all know that our insides are unpleasant to look at, which is why we try to keep them covered up at all times.
Look at it this way: George Clooney would be indistinguishable from Steve Buscemi if not for their respective epidermises. Sure, Clooney is two inches taller, and there are probably posture deviations, but they’re close to the same age and fitness level. Without his George Clooney haircut, is he even George Clooney? He might as well not be. Even a fatso and a skinny person are more alike than they are different on the inside. Skin is the largest organ in the body, but it only makes up between 12–16% of our total body weight. This just confirms what we knew all along: beauty is only skin-deep, and the stuff underneath is hideous.
The Sounds and Smells
Appearance aside, you can’t argue with how our bodies affect the other senses. Not everyone has the same level of body odor, but we all shit and fart, and piss and puke. We’re constantly leaking fluids and gases, constantly sneezing, drooling on our pillows, sweating through our clothes, bleeding and scabbing, shedding hair and ear wax and toenails and dandruff. Even the Beyoncés and the Timothée Chalamets among us do all of these things. So did Jesus Christ. And Gandhi. And all of the so-called “immaculate” Popes. The Queen of England. Vladimir Putin. Kim Jong-un. No matter who we are, nothing embarrasses us more than our own bodies.
Getting Woke
The woke crowd has been very aggressively insisting that we stop using the “F” word to describe overweight people, and so-called “body shaming” is an offense akin to racism and other forms of hate. If you point out the correlation between obesity and poor health outcomes, you’re shot down by the righteous Twitter mobs for being a bully. We’re taught that we’re supposed to accept ourselves as we are, which isn’t a bad sentiment until people start attacking Adele because she actually did lose weight.
The truth is no matter how much some people exercise and diet, they will never have the body of Zendaya, and saying obesity is a choice is more than a little bit misleading. A more accurate statement would be that everyone has the power to make a positive impact on their health. Making lifestyle changes such as eating more vegetables and getting regular exercise will benefit you even you don’t see the changes reflected in your appearance. Make no mistake about it, though: lose one pound, lose 50 pounds, pack on muscle, burn fat, improve your posture and flexibility, lower your cholesterol, quit smoking, give up chocolate — none of it will change the fact that your body is completely and utterly repulsive.
Even robots are gross. All that plastic and battery acid…Yuck.
