In Which I talk about Butts (And their Portrayal in Music/The Media) Part III

Shout Out to the person who has been liking my posts and thereby adding to my presence on Google. (Sorry the thing isn't giving me an identity so I just have to go with "Awesome post-liker person" hope that alright :) )

And without further ado: For Part three I am featuring the big butt "trend" as well as talking more about fulfilling the self and challenging others' expectations of you.

The Big Butt Trend

So... this new big butt "trend" people are partially attributing to celebrities like Beyoncé Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj etc. Once again I'm going to go back to the problem of messing with your body to please other people. 

On the surface it might seem like the solution to the constant pressure to be skinny that has been predominant over approximately the last fifty years, but really I think it's just the same thing taking on a different front. 

There's still the pressure to look a certain way, there's still an ideal that not everyone would be physically able to achieve. The fact that it's about having more weight makes little difference. To be honest it's possible that it could be harder to meet the standards of this trend because the weight is idealized in certain areas and where you gain weight is not necessarily easy to control. 

"Must we really celebrate big butts by deriding small ones?"

The woman in red addresses the problem pretty well at approximately 1:46

There's a difference between celebrating and turning something into an expectation. 

I wouldn't even call it celebrating as there are several cases where by "celebrating" small butts/small bodies are scorned, (I talked a bit about such a case in Part I of this series, read that post here) and as the Huffington Post says "must we really celebrate big butts by deriding small ones?" (full article on that here)

There is a difference between celebrating and showing it off as "the way" to be beautiful. Because when you do that people are drawn into the trap of changing their body for other people. 

When it comes to beauty, people can be desperate, we resort to extremes such as literally SUCKING OUT our fat to be skinny, now that we want big butts, we're getting butt implants. 

And when we do it for other people often even when we do achieve what we feel are appropriate looks, we tend to still hate ourselves, as we start to view ourselves so negatively, and because society will never be satisfied, we always feel like we're not pretty/skinny/big/[insert other adjective here] ENOUGH. 

We just have to stop showing off a certain thing as beautiful, stop obsessing over body parts and start focusing on what matters to us. 

But when we do it for ourselves "Oh I like having big arms, I'm going to try to get big arms, oh I like skinny calves so I'm going to work toward skinny calves" only then when we're doing it to satisfy ourselves, and our health, only then are we able to accept and be satisfied with ourselves because we're aiming to fulfill ourselves and not others. 

I think we'd be a lot happier if we just let go of some of that burden because honestly always trying to please others is crazy hard. 

If we stop being concerned with what others think of us, I think we'd be a lot happier. When we stop obsessing and just take time to enjoy what we enjoy life is a lot less deplorable and that frees up time to do things like improving yourself, and discovering who you are and not what people want you to be. 

Besides, when we do our best to be the best person we can be, that high opinion and approval will come naturally.  

I mean, yeah, it feels great to put on something nice and know that other people will see you and have a positive opinion of the way you look, but that shouldn't be all you live for, there are other ways to get that feeling - think about the last time you did something and were really proud of it. Wasn't that amazing? Even better than getting a compliment on your outfit maybe? 

The other thing is you're never going to be able to please everyone and all it takes is one negative comment to make that great feeling come crashing down. 

"Question what the media shows as appropriate, evaluate it against your personal morals, and do your part in keeping whatever meanness you can out of the world."

The media definitely plays a role in this - bombarding us with ideals and what we should/shouldn't do, but that doesn't mean we are powerless about things either. (And I keep on saying this, but I really think it's important) Question what the media shows as appropriate, (Some of what it shows will truly be appropriate, some is not.) evaluate it against your personal morals, and do your part in keeping whatever meanness you can out of the world. 

A shift in the media to encompass a broader range of ideals would be awesome, but it would be very difficult, if not impossible to be able to include everyone. so let's try to change the Media, but we shouldn't be afraid to rely on ourselves either. 

And thus conclude my Three-part series on butts and the media. Thank you for reading this post, and if you read all three of them multiply that by three. (If you haven't read the others, here's a link to Part I, and here 's a link to Part II)

I'd love to hear about what you people of the internet think -- I know this can come off as really negative and not happy with anything, but when good intentions take a detour when being translated into action I think it's worthy to point that out, and remind people to think about the media so next time the detour is smaller, and/or doesn't affect people as much. 

So how are people feeling about this three part series? Do you like them? Would you prefer I do more series like this or space out blog posts on the same issues?

Share your opinions with me in the comments! I do believe I am still looking for my first comment, so get a commenting and I'm going to try to get a cool prize for the first overall comment on this blog. :)