Skip to main content

What's the skinny?

Something that baffles me, whether it's with indie rock fans my age or teenagers brainwashed in the ways of mall punk, why are so many of them skinny?

There was a time in college when I bulked up to a hefty 180 pounds. XL t-shirts and 36 inch waist pants was where I was at. With more outdoor activity (ie, walks at least twenty minutes long a few times a week), I was able to shed some pounds. A few years later, I started eating less (maybe because of insanely high levels of anxiety) and was walking/running more, so I dropped even more pounds. I've been able to keep my weight at a steady level (150 or so) ever since and I've been able to wear L-sized shirts with no problem.

I first became aware of all this skinniness when certain band t-shirts I got were L-sized at its largest. There were no XLs in sight, so it wasn't until I lost all this weight that I could actually wear them comfortably. Somewhere down the line, I realized that almost all of the merch makers kept a ceiling on the L-size. Plus, there was the mainstream popularity of wearing tight, vintage-looking clothing. This was all perfect for skin and bones people, but then I also noticed these sizes (and smaller) on people who couldn't fit into these sizes. Still to this day, I say "Huh?"

No matter how much I bulk up or slim down, I need some room in my clothes. Tight-fitting clothes literally rub me the wrong way, so that's a no-go. So I wonder: how can people, regardless of eating habits and exercise, remain so skinny. It's one thing with vegetarians to be skinny, but what about all the meat eaters that are skinny too? I don't think starvation is a key reason as I see them eat average portions of food, from super-healthy to pure junk food. I'm not seeing these people on regular exercise regimens either. So where's all this virtual weight not going?

Of course being skinny has been a desirable goal, regardless of age, but I get the feeling that a lot of these people aren't aiming to be thin. They aren't trying to fit in with an ideal shape, though there are plenty of others that want to be as rail thin as possible. For me, I've always had a little bit of chunk on my body, but as long as I'm active, eat regularly and can fit into my clothes, I'm on the right track. I don't aim to be a string bean, but I don't aim to be an overweight couch potato either.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air

Hello, Control

I'm still a big fan of iTunes . I haven't tried Napster , Urge or eMusic as I've been perfectly happy with Apple's program ever since I downloaded it two years ago. However, an annoying new feature has come up with its latest version, 7.0. Whenever you pull up your music library, a sidebar taking up 3/4ths of the screen appears plugging the iTunes Music Store. Why is this an annoyance? Well, first and foremost, since you can't close the sidebar, you can't escape it. I believe a music library is a private collection, a spot away from the music store. So what's the need for constant advertisements and plugs? To provide a better visual, let me describe what I see whenever I pull up a song in my iTunes library. When I listen to "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" by the Weakerthans, I see a graphic for Left and Leaving , the album that it comes from (and available in the iTunes Music Store), along with a list of the Weakerthans' other albums,

Politics Shmolitics

Yesterday, the more pleas I saw for people to go out and vote, the more uncomfortable I felt. Plenty of the blogs I hit up everyday said something along the lines of "Vote and if you don't, don't complain." Folks, this is why I find discussing politics so alienating. There are plenty of reasons why I don't discuss politics on here or in my everyday conversations. The biggest reason is because I don't have a lot of interest in politics in the first place. By what I've seen, heard and read for the last eight years, political debates are usually pissing contests. Judging by the views I've processed, it would be easy to think that we're all slowly going downhill either on the left, right or down the middle. Yet I don't think we're going totally downhill or totally uphill. Debating the direction we're going seems futile, especially when adults start screaming at each other like they're in grade school. To my ears, political debates are s