anna

First of all, I'd like to say it is interesting that Time's person of the year is "you," of course alluding to YouTube. I'm glad I wrote my last entry when I did. Aren't I prescient? Haven't read the article yet, but YouTube was also their invention of the year, so I have some idea where they're going with this.

In other, related rants, I am deeply distrubed by the state of our culture. What else is new, right? I don't think we need government to regulate or anything like that, I just wish more people were criticizes the status quo, thinking about what they value, questioning in general. Uncertainty is a good thing.

Let me tie these two things together. Earlier I noted that I feared we, as a culture, were loosing our ability to make sound aesthetic judgements, that we may in fact be in the process of forgetting that such a judgement is valid. I recently came across a 19 year old girls blog. She is one of many who idolizes silly tarts like Lindsay, Paris, Nicole, Mischa, etc. She glorifies anarexia, her #1 interest is losing weight, she counts her calories (300 a day?) and her target weight is 85lbs. This is the flipside of obese America. Many Americans are terribly unhealthy, overweight, and have attrocious diets. Others are ridiculously obsessed with working out, eating healthy, 'organically,' blah blah. Most people are superficial, interested in material fashion, trends, exercise and diet fads, cosmetic surgery, and in general paralysed by a fear of death. Few people think about this, and thus our cultural anxiety over death is simmering under the surface of it all. What do we value? Survival. Youth. Material things. What are these worth if our culture has become so destructive and deriviative? Back to the point, these incredibly sick girls are the flip side. We, as a culture, seem disgusted by fat people. They embody laziness, lack of self-control, excess. They are almost openly made fun of in mass media. These poor girls, however, miss the point. Moderation is the key. I will not post any links at this point, but if you're interested, do a search for pro-ana, or just browse through teenagers blogs. It's scary. I think I'll write an article on this. Just my initial shock, but I don't think it's going to fade.