Beginning around the end of April, the weather grows warm. Intense sunlight beats down enough on us to cause us take off our thin overcoats. The season to expose our skin is coming. Because of hot sunlight, people’s clothing becomes short. On the street, there are so many women who are wearing hot-pants and wearing sleeveless shirts.
Many female students may be thinking that it is time to start going on a diet because the summer is coming. Many females go to gyms and oriental medical clinics to go on a diet. The kinds of diets which people try are various. Why do we have our heart set on dieting? Is the reason for staying healthy or showing our nice bodies to others?
There are two reasons why many women and men are enthusiastic about dieting. As we are in a modern society, we are more interested in having free time and maintaining our health than in money and work. In addition, the transition from working six days a week to working five days a week is helping us live easy and healthy lives. As the time for looking back on themselves increases, people naturally cherish their health and pursue beautiful body lines. The second reason is that the media is encouraging diet crazes by showing slim entertainers through mass media. Most idol stars and actors/actresses who appear in the media, such as TV and the internet, have slim bodies. By watching TV and seeing many internet articles, Korean young men and women have internalized thinking that their body shapes should be slim like entertainers'. Under the effect of the media, Korean society has become of an appearance-oriented society. If someone wears hot-pants with elephant legs, they will hear 'terror' from men, which proves Korea’s lookism.
Then, are entertainers' slim bodies the ideal which we should seek? Is a person who goes on a diet a fat person? The answer is "No!". Many people of normal weight buy books about dieting and go on diets to get slender figures like entertainers. Many people go on a diet to show off their figures rather than to maintain their health. This kind of diet is a poison, not a medicine. What we should pursue through dieting is health, not achieving the desire of showing off our figures. I hope that CBNU students will make wise choices about dieting. We have to think if our bodies really need dieting or not. If we need to go on a diet, we should reject unhealthy ways of dieting such as skipping meals, and seek healthy ways, such as increasing the amount of exercise and controlling the size of our meals.