The search for the great american boyfriend....

Don't be thrown off by my title readers! I am not looking for the great American boyfriend XD However, the reason for this post is due to my hulu.com hunt tonight. So out of sheer boredom tonight, I found this show on hulu.com called "Genuine Ken: The search for the great American boyfriend" and wow... it really depicts how America has become shallow - not only to women but to guys (as this show depicts!) as well!

I mean the title does say it all: The marketing directors for Barbie are looking for the next real life Ken to make another doll out of. But as I continue to think about it, if you're looking for the great American boyfriend, wouldn't it be something a little less like Ken? All of the contestants are quite muscular (they make fun of the contestant who isn't muscular and pale) and have beachy tans and even some are past models! But when I think of the great American boyfriend I think of the typical college guy. Not muscular, just average in height, weight, skin tone, looks. If you want someone to represent America, shouldn't it be someone in that average category?

Let me give you some staggering statistics on America and the people who TRULY represent this country:

• About 2/3 men out of 100 men (about 68 men) are between 5'7" and 6'.
• About 2/3 men out of all American men are 5'10" .
• About 1/3 of them are outside this range, with about half of those on each side.
• So, about 1/6 are 6'1" or taller, and about 1/6 are 5'6" or shorter.
• The average American male shoe size - 9-12 (U.S. measure).
• The average American male has 17.6% body fat.
• An average American man weighs 182 lbs. .
• The average American male exercises 2.87 hours a week.
• The average American male has 12.4 inch biceps and a 39.7 inch chest.
• The average American spends $596 dollars on sporting goods and equipments each year.
• The average American spends $874 on vitamins and food supplements.
• The average American male runs one mile in 12 minutes and 17 seconds.
• The average American male runs 110 meters in 16.5 seconds.
• The average American man eats 193 hamburgers and 115 hot dogs annually. ( I thought the extra facts on guys were kinda funny so i kept them in lol. :))

And now for the women...

• The average American woman is 5'4" tall and weighs 140 pounds.
• The average American model is 5'11" tall and weighs 117 pounds. (And this is who our young children are looking up too!!!!! )
• About 80% of American women keep on saying that they're dissatisfied with their looks.
• On any given day, almost half of the women in the United States are on a diet.
• During 2001-2003, the average American female weight was 153 pounds.
• Up to 2006, the average American female weight was 159 pounds. These figures are enough to represent the increase in average American weight by year.

So while i was looking up these statistics, I also found this:

• Almost half of American children between first and third grades say they want to be thinner.
• Four out of five ten-year-old children are afraid of being fat.
• On any given day, one in four men are on a diet.
• Half of our nine and ten-year-old girls say that being on a diet makes them feel better about themselves.
• More than one out of three "normal dieters" progress to pathological dieting. One fourth of those will suffer from partial or full syndrome eating disorders.
• Americans spend over forty billion dollars a year on dieting and diet related products.
• Between five and ten million women and girls in the United States struggle with eating disorders and borderline conditions.
• One million boys and men struggle with eating disorders and borderline conditions.
• The number of people with eating disorders and borderline conditions is triple the number of people living with AIDS (664,921 people are living with AIDS).
• Eating disorders affect at least three times as many people as schizophrenia does (2.2 million people are living with schizophrenia).

Aren't these statistics insane? I mean, children as young as NINE and TEN feel that DIETS make them feel GOOD? They shouldn't even know what a diet is! Not to mention, people are becoming sick because of an image that we have placed in our society as the 'norm'. This not only affects women but it affects men too. Just to think, all i did was watch a few episodes of Genuine Ken which isn't even a publicly aired show (just something made by hulu) and I was wondering why I wasn't more fit like the stick thin girls working for Barbie corporation. But, imagine the children who watch countless hours of T.V. with celebrities who are mostly underweight so that they look "GOOD" on T.V. Is this what the world has come too?

P.S. - I didn't expect this blog to turn out this way BUT, i'm happy that it did lol.