Person's weight not linked to their value

Weight loss appears to be a heavy issue these days.

It's probably the time of year, coupled with programs like this newspaper's Biggest Loser program and the eponymous reality television series on NBC or any of the weight-loss programs that are out there, to name just a few influences.

People are unhappy with their appearance, and perhaps there's some importance to be assigned to that.

But how much of this is genuine unhappiness, and how much of it stems from people simply catering to an extremely unhealthy and unrealistic image of what comprises a healthy individual that seems prevalent in society?

Movies, televisions and magazines are filled with chiseled or curvaceous figures that look like they were cut on high upon Mount Olympus, but we are also savvy enough to know that very few of those people obtain those bodies naturally any more. Instead, they go under the knife or pop a few pills to better achieve that perceived ideal.

Even those people who don't go to those extremes, but simply feel that they could stand to lose a few pounds - Why? Granted, if one's health is genuinely at risk or one is genuinely unhappy with their self-image, then those are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed.

But what's wrong with being outside the norm, and being happy with that? Normalcy is boring, it's dull, it's nothing to be fought for or to take away from one's enjoyment over.

If the difference between a person's joy and his or her misery is a hot fudge sundae, then for cripe's sakes, that person ought to be allowed to skip the calorie-counting and enjoy the sundae without having to factor how much lettuce they're going to have to eat to counterbalance it.

At the same time, finding happiness doesn't have to mean burying oneself in six sundaes. There has to be a happy medium between eating too little and too much, and most diets are at their base simply a matter of common sense — being smart, eating right, some exercise.

Change should be something a person wants to have happen for themselves, and not something they think needs to happen.

Would some people be even better people were they to weigh less? Is their value as a person directly linked to the numbers that come up on the scale? No, but society teaches us that they might just be more worthy of our notice, and that's wrongful thinking.

As the great feline philosopher Garfield has opined, "I am in shape. Round is a shape."

It seems as though a lot of people might have watched those Very Special Episodes of every sitcom ever made, where the prevailing message time and again was that it was what was on the inside of a person that counted, but they weren't really listening.

Matthew Weaver is the business and agriculture reporter for the Columbia Basin Herald.