 |
| Rob's Soapbox | ||
|
Congratulations!
You have finally landed on the one page on this entire site (and on the entire internet for that matter) that is purely without bullshit... my soapbox page. There are a lot of times during our show that, whether it's because of time constraints and other obligations, I don't always get to address some issues that I feel don't get the attention they deserve. There are even more times when I just don't feel like waiting until the show the next day to get some things off my chest. Thus, I have started the "Rob's Soapbox" page. If you have clicked on this page looking for someone to coddle your fragile sense of self-esteem, or tell you what you want to hear or to reinforce your outdated world view, then exit this page right now and go somewhere else. If you are in search of the last forum for reason and common sense left in the world, then sit back, relax, and enjoy. I make only one promise with this soapbox page... if you read long enough and often enough, you will eventually be offended. So here's my latest soapbox. Listen up, 'cause you just might learn something... |
||
|
||
August 12, 2007 BIG BOOBS AND SUICIDE I have always been stunned by this nation; a country where 90% of us believe in God, yet 75% of us hate the way God created us. How in the world can a society so sure of its’ creator and his divine wisdom, be so vain and unsure of his creations? Oh that’s right; I forgot…you’re all a bunch of self-loathing hypocrites with no self esteem. Far be it from me to inject religion into a topic as asinine as plastic surgery, but if I didn’t live in a nation where religion is repeatedly injected into everything from public school to abortion to the death penalty perhaps I’d be more inclined to hold my tongue. I always love the absurd comments I get from religious zealots when I ask them, prior to getting their faces injected with poison or a pair of beach balls attached to their chest area, why they don’t appreciate and love the way their God made them and thus not mess with his nature? After popping their eyeballs back into their heads from the shock of stunning logic I have just thrown at them, most of them reply with non-sensical answers like “he’ll forgive me,” or my favorite “God created plastic surgery so that I could make such choices.” I usually respond to the latter by pointing out that God must have then created abortionists to provide such choices which usually ends the conversation (and in some cases the relationship which is fine by me). The arrogance it takes to believe to know which advances in medicine are deigned by the Lord and which are sent here by Satan is stunning. To whit, to have the audacity to claim that aborting a baby is murdering God’s will but altering one of his existing creatures with a knife is somehow acceptable is more than sheer hypocrisy, it’s lunacy. Beyond just the religious context, however, is this nation’s overwhelming self-esteem deficit. I have long said that America (and the world as a whole) needs a serious injection of self-respect. It is so sad to see so many people not truly accept who they are, and therefore be unwilling to embrace and live with their flaws while accentuating and building upon their positives. Far be it from to me to elevate my on-air sidekicks to any level of deity, but each of them has made tremendous progress in this area over the past decade (if that sounds condescending or patronizing it is not meant to). Dawn stopped arguing over the fact that she is a chatty kook who eats food that, to the rest of us, is weird to say the least. For years Dawn would argue over the fact that black beans mixed with tomatoes zucchini and peanut butter was a normal meal. Now she proudly says “Whatever, I like it and it’s who I am.” If you’re going to be a nut, at least admit it. Meanwhile, Dawn builds on her positive qualities of being a compassionate, caring, chatty girl who loves her husband, her cats and her stash. Arnie, meanwhile, made an asinine attempt to lose weight a year ago before simply accepting the fact that he is a whale. Now, Arnie seems to be on a mission to challenge the laws of physics each day when he see if the studio chair will actually support his girth. Meanwhile, Arnie builds on his positive qualities of being a hysterical, over-reactive, grumpy, man child. Maybe not the two best examples, but you get my drift. Sadly, most of this nation (as individuals) refuses to accept their flaws, has no desire to do any work to change what they can, and simply seeks out and looks for public acceptance via quick and easy “solutions.” I have long contended that the level of self hatred that must be occurring inside someone who allows a doctor to cut them for no reason other than vanity must be off the charts. Surgery of any kind is one of the most feared things in life, bested only by spiders, snakes, death and public speaking, yet millions of Americans are requesting and paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of being cut, poked, sliced, stuck and molded all in the name of “looking better.” How ironic is it that the same nation that has led the charge to lower our national smoking rate (on the grounds that it kills millions of us yearly) from 75% of the population to 25% is also the world’s greatest consumer of dangerous elective vanity surgery? How does a nation that has dramatically lowered the rate of people who use the sun and/or tanning beds to look better due to fear of cancer, at the same team lead the world in the rate of people who will let doctors slice and dice them for the exact same motivation that first caused them to lie in the sun; to look better? The answers are either that we don’t know or don’t care (or both) about the overwhelming causes, motivations and side effects of all of this absurd elective plastic surgery. I submit to you that in the end a lot of Americans would actually tell you that they’d rather be dead than alive and looking less than their best. What a nation. For years we’ve read, heard and ignored all of the research, facts and statistics of how dangerous all forms of plastic surgery are physically (with liposuction doing a nice job of killing about 100 Americans per year) A multitude of other forms of plastic surgery provide a staggering amount of dangerous physical side effects, from the idiocy of injecting your face with poison to literally killing thousands of nerves in your body through other extremely stupid procedures. The biggest side effect, however, is just now beginning to get noticed and it is not physical at all. As my hypothesis has always stated, anyone willing to submit to these procedures must, in my opinion, be mentally ill on some level, most likely stemming from a total lack of self esteem. Sadly, because these folks can’t gain the love and respect they so desperately crave from inside themselves, they seek it from others in the form of being praised for their physical appearance. The dirty little secret, of course, is that being loved for how you look is hollow, and not rewarding or meaningful at all and, by the way, is a never ending battle that leads to nothing more than anon-stop addiction to more procedures. So as these sorry souls continue to seek out the approval of others via alterations to their body, they wallow further and further into their own mental abyss, never finding the love and approval they are so desperately searching for. Alas, yet another study proving how right I have always been about this has been released. As we head into the second decade of this nation’s obsession with plastic surgery, we are better able to reflectively look back at how the surgeries have helped or harmed those who have sought them. In a starkly un-surprising (to me) study released last week, women who have sought breast augmentation surgery are three times more likely to commit suicide. The reasons are obvious to me, of course; having not found the love they wanted through their tits, these poor girls eventually become so painfully depressed that they see no point to be alive. The answer, of course, is not to ban plastic surgery, or ban ads or shows or businesses which objectify women (especially since the largest growth of plastic surgery in this nation in the past five years has been men). Regulation and/or legislation never cure the human condition. The answer is for this nation somehow, to regain its’ identity and put an end to its hollow, celebrity worship and vanity. No one believes more than I do that looking good is important, but the trick is to look good with what you’re given, and understand that no matter how good or bad you look, your soul is what defines you, not your cup size.
|
||