Let me grab my soap box...

A few things that have been floating through my mind this last week... FIRST, I am a little upset with the person/research team who decided that they needed to research the rippled look of the back of women's legs (today known as cellulite). I mean did we really have to give it a NAME and make is seem like some kind of condition that people suffer from. All these people did was create a huge source of self conciseness in women and give body complexes to millions of young girls. I personally think the lotion industry just wanted a new way to make heaps of money... by creating "Anti-Cellulite" creams that in all reality DO NOTHING... I know because I was one of the the girls with a complex who tried to buy every single product I could to make it go away!!! I even spent a summer trying this home remedy made of coffee grounds, olive oil and sugar... which you would intensely massage into your thighs. It was so messy!!!! but it did make my legs feel incredible smooth, but that was perhaps more due to the massage... olive oil and the fact that the coffee grounds were exfoliating. I still had cellulite... it never went away.

And that is just the thing... almost every woman I know has it in some shape or form, even the ridiculously skinny people that you know have it.

The reason I started thinking about this is because I was reading some website full of profound quotes a few months ago and one simply said, "There is no such thing as cellulite." And I decided it was my new favorite quote... I wish I would have remembered who said it. Then I looked at few more and I really liked this one:

"If 90% of all women have cellulite, then isn't it NORMAL? We may not love it, but what are a few little bumps in the bigger scheme of life? And if the condition affects 80 to 90 percent of women, then it IS a normal condition, then why sweat it?"
--Rona Berg

Ok... so this brings me to my SECOND point... this is just another example of people being overcome by a little something I like the call the SCIENCE MONSTER. It is this desire that people have to prove everything in a laboratory or by some sort of test. I mean there are billions... trillions... ok I have no idea how much... lets just say a GRIP of money is spent on research each year. I should know I go to a college that is huge on research.

Let me just give you one such ridiculous example... So my professor (The hippie one who teaches Sociocultural Nutrition) had us read two journal articles last week... both about 14 pages long about the findings of a research study that was done to determine IF community garden set up for inner city kids was beneficial.

Ummm GEEE let me think here. So you went into the ghetto and took a bunch of kids that are surrounded by drugs, violence, gang-banging... and all sorts of trouble making. Then you planted a garden, taught them how to grow and cultivate plants... teaching them not only how to work, but also a useful skill that they can someday use to support themselves and their families with. Then you introduced them to positive role models, helped them to form meaningful relationships through sharing a common goal and allowed them to enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of their labors.

I am going to go out 0n a limb here and say that YES this is a beneficial thing. BUT some little group of scientists decided that they would need to do research just to make sure that this was a good thing. So they interviewed all of these kids, gave them extensive questionnaires to fill out... and calculated a bunch of statistics... yada yada yada. I can only imagine how much these kids wanted to rip up these questionnaires and go back to playing outside again with their friends. And then these "Scientists" wrote journal articles which were boring and uninteresting that myself and about 50 other college students (who are busy enough as it is) had to read.

STOP WASTING YOUR TIME... and mine I might add, WITH YOUR USELESS RESEARCH!!!! So they take home message for today is... there is not such thing as cellulite, and Science isn't always all it's cracked up to be.

Ok... deep breath, I feel much better now.