Buff Happy Internet Users?

There's a joke that was going around a few years ago that suggested that a world without men would be full of fat happy women. I think about this more than I care to admit, I often seem to discover that many of the bloggers out there are heavy women, like myself, who find a sense of commnity and worth in a world where we are judged by our words rather than our appearances.

This idea of community comes into conflict with things I have learned and read about, and on days when I have a natural tendency toward depression, I fight with a fear that biology is destiny. Why am I veering off into this despondent-prone area you might ask and I would reply that I've noticed a propensity to gain weight over the last few years that corresponds precisely to the amount of time I have been spending on the internet.



Marshall McLuhan, famed Communications genius, suggested the medium is (makes) the message. This means just as electricity has the message of life (and cultural change ) that does not sleep because it allows us to work at all hours, folloowing this logic, so too would the internet mean a life full of flab because it allows us to be sedentary for long protracted periods of time. (To be more fair to poor old Marshall - he thought television would provide the "global village" allowing us to be in contact with all parts of the world and form a hapy, tuned in community. In my more optimistic moments i believe this is what is happening with the internet!) Of course the fat is just a bonus! (A bonus that demoralizes me).



At even more melancholic times, I return to the biology is destiny paranoia that was spurred on by the research of my best friend Linda Mealey (about whom I wrote in In Memoriam. )

Although the joke suggests that women "maintain their figures" in order to please men, Dr. Mealey's research suggested quite the opposite. Her ethnological work told a story of males competing (biologically and unconsciously) to produce the maximum numbers of offspring, while women competed against other women (again unconsciously) to be viewed as desireable partners to this male pursuit. Her work with bulimic and anorexic women suggested that the worst thing to do was to put them together in a group because they would then feed off of an innate competitive drive to be thin and desireable. Her research also suggested that it is women who look at and judge other women. That woman dress and look sharp for and because of other women (and not in that community oriented, nurturing stereotype of women that is so beloved.)


(From www.josieandderek.com)

I dispute this of course - and in my balanced moments remind myself to be thankful that Freud came along and gave us repression (and of course the church gave it to us long before that.)



This is a good thing, because it reminds us that we do not have to act on our innate desires and that we are mostly better off when we use thoughtful control over our urges and think about others in the process.

So when I put all these ideas together:

Sedentary internet use making us fat,
Women judging women
and the ability to resist our biological programming and then I look at (or think about) my own experience...

I decide to believe that we can make informed choices about how much to use the inernet and how to judge the people with whom we interact, therefore the internet is not simply a gathering of fat, happy women (and men) and even if it were (cause what is wrong with that really?) we are a supportive community regardless of our appearances and biological biases. I love the community offered by this new communication tool - I will myself to spend less time on the net so that I can stay healthy and fit, but I embrace the interest, kindness and concern that has been shown by the people whom I have met, read and who read my blog. I was touched by all the people asking if I was okay after the bridge collapse and the number of bloggers who wrote to find out if Bart was okay. Whatever our tendencies, urges or prejudices, the internet has reconfirmed to me that people are basically caring and kind and that if we take time to get to know each other good things happen.