Alex Lehr 

Staff Writer

OPINION

As a man, I adore meat. Meat is the soul of my day and night.

I love steak, I need beef and I idolize succulent chicken. However, there is a far more tender display of meat that brings me utter joy to know it exists. It is the meat of curvy women, of hefty gals who know they are beautiful because of what God gave them.

Unfortunately, in contemporary standards, women are treated as if the way they look naturally is not good enough.

With a crumbling society’s idiotic need to hide luscious curves, diminish big-boned beauty and sterilize fine, brilliantly crafted faces with heavy doses of make-up comes the fall of true beauty recognition.

In today’s society, we have access to Photoshop, and this in turn allows magazine editors and all alike to deform and cripple the very beautiful aspects of women that people should adore.

Whether it be “Essence Magazine’s” attempt to give Kerry Washington aired up jubblies or “W Magazine” chopping off Demi Moore’s left hip, the extra-terrestrials who govern magazine influence over the photoshopping of already beautiful women must be put to an end.

When I see a skinny girl, I stare. When I see a hefty girl, I stare. I don’t need reductions done to them to make them appealing to me, and I don’t need them plastered in layer after layer of make-up to know that they are art forms on legs.

The idea that not only magazines, but also television, movies and advertisements are so focused on making women toothpicks or weird deformed mutants with their obsession of trimming fat sickens me.

Society’s overall expectation of the female image takes away the natural art form that this wondrous gender is. We need meaty girls just as much as we need any other body type, because there is no definite outline for what beauty is defined as.

I have been blessed with a woman who is meaty and proud.

She is a woman who knows that real sexiness comes from the way she lives her life, the way she talks to people and the way she allows a firm attitude of genuine response and opinion to guide her actions.

To me, the expectation that sex sells, that women have to be a certain size and wear certain clothing is a joke. If the morons who lay down these ridiculous standards would open their eyeballs past their own nether-regions and allow their primitive brains to access the alluring displays of dolphins, bass and minnows as a collective unity, rather than obsessing over the minnows alone, then I do believe that this whole self-esteem movement that has been going on in America for some time could finally be put to the grave. Women who are skinny, hourglass, meaty, what does it matter?

Why can we look at the Statue of Liberty and adore the scale and majesty, but not a big boned girl?

Why do we feel the need to force ourselves into anorexia, to starve ourselves because of the blindness of the “experts?”

Self-esteem is not about someone telling you how special you are, or how unique your methods are or even how talented. Self-esteem is about doing a self-evaluation, realizing that these unjust standards are utter crap, and doing the “I’m Awesome” dance because you know that you were born to razzle dazzle.

After all, you were made by God, who created an entire universe. I think I trust this professional artist over some underpaid Photoshopper at the “Enquirer” or “Cosmo.”

This is my word to all women: the next time you see a magazine on the Walmart or Dollar General shelf, carefully analyze the terrible, deforming ideals of women’s image: then have yourself a laugh, go buy yourself a drink, and toast to yourself. You’ve earned it with that body.