Why I Love & Hate Pinterest - Part 1

Why I Love & Hate Pinterest

I’m sure a lot of you, maybe even most of you, have come across this site due in no small part to Pinterest. I use Pinterest a fair amount, primarily because it’s an easy way to get free exposure for my writing and, eventually, my services as a personal trainer. As a whole, I really love Pinterest, there’s some great stuff on there and the community that ‘pins’ seems to be without the judgemental trolls that inhabit other social media outlets like Tumblr and Imgur.
Unfortunately though, as far as I’ve seen in the Health & Fitness bracket of the site, Pinterest does offer a platform for some pretty suspect stuff to get a great amount of exposure.
The way I see it, Pinterest is a great place for great training practice, nutritional advice, and encouragement, but there’s an awful lot of stuff that’s the complete opposite appearing and, worse, getting frequently repinned.
There seems to be 3 major ways in which Pinterest is not well-serving the fitness community, and they are: promoting warped goals/ideas, extolling poor understanding of realistic attainment, and lack of actual information.
Over the next few weeks I’ll go through examples of each of these three headings, and talk a little bit about why they’re not helping you, or your fitness goals (or even your mental health, some of them). Given that each heading is averaging around 500 words, I’ll separate each heading into 2 weeks, so it’s not just massive article after massive article.

This week, we’re going to go through example 1 of how Pinterest can give exposure to, and potentially promote, warped goals/ideas.

Warped Goals/Ideas

Firstly, I’m going to use examples of things I’ve seen on Pinterest for this series, naturally, but for the sake of a) not calling people out like a classless clown, and b) not inadvertently shaming people, I won’t be using names or linking to specific pins. Additionally, if you read this and think “hey, I’ve seen that pin”, please don’t out the people who posted it, don’t be that guy.

So here we go!

“The silhouette of a perfect girl ... get the body that will make men run after you”

So, let’s just unpack what’s being said here:

• ·         There is a specific body type that men like
• ·         Getting said specific body type will cause men to chase you
• ·         Men liking you is a worthwhile ultimate goal for fitness engagement
• ·         Your body is what will attract men, ultimately

I don’t want to seem like a women’s lib militant debater or anything, but goodness me when you dissect that comment it comes up pretty… well, awfully. If I saw my daughter (not that I have one yet) had posted this on social media I’d be pretty upset.
Firstly, there is no set specific body type that men like, unless you know of some research that I don’t. There are norms and averages, of course, but there is no one set type, that’s the beauty of ‘individual preference’.
For instance, here are some examples of women who many consider to have beautiful physiques:

Miesha Tate

Beyoncé

Kate Upton

Notice anything? They’re all pretty different, right? There’s a professional athlete, a professional singer, and a professional model. All different, all considered attractive.
This is what I’m getting at – don’t assume there’s a set body type that is ‘perfect’, or ‘most attractive’, because it’s not the case.
Furthermore, and I guess secondly, trying to gain a specific body type that you believe will cause a member of the opposite sex to chase after you, because it might cause them to chase after you, is a pretty sad and desperate goal to have. What if you don’t come across the guys who like that body type? Let’s say you live in Detroit, and say every single guy in Detroit loves them ‘chubby girls’, and you’ve just spent the last couple of years becoming a ‘fit chick’, what happens when your goal of getting male attention doesn’t happen? You’re probably going to feel extremely depressed about yourself, and chances are that won’t lead to a lifelong engagement in healthy activity. Which leads me into my ‘thirdly’ – attention from others, or an ‘external goal’ is not a healthy reason to engage in an active and healthy lifestyle. Do exercise because you want to be healthy, to reduce your risk of disease and cardiac arrests, to be more confident, to achieve a sporting goal, whatever. Don’t exercise purely for the attention of the opposite sex, because if/when that doesn’t happen you are not going to continue with that lifestyle which is potentially prolonging/saving your life.
Finally, on this one at least, if you are relying on your body to attract men then you either need to take some time to become confident in yourself and the fact that people can love you for who you are inside, not out, or you need to start trying to attract guys who aren’t total assholes. I’m not going to get too into that, as it’s not really fitness-related and I’m not a psychiatrist, but you see what I’m saying. People should find you attractive, not just your body.

As I said earlier, these points are each quite long, so I'm going to have to section them up appropriately for you guys to take them in easily. This post may seem a little short (and mildly devoid of fitness advice) but next week we will pick up where we've left off and I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

See you next week for Part 2 of Warped Goals/Ideas...