I think in the grand scheme of things, most people know where their body geometry fits in to different body geometries of the mass population. They can use describing words such as fat, skinny, big, tall, short, petite to describe themselves. While it would seem that these words are totally dependent upon how you perceive yourself, I have recently discovered that this body image is also a function of the people around you. Statistically speaking, this would be a sample.
I discovered this because of a disconnect that I have been having with what I perceive my body image to be, more so with height than weight. Am I tall, average, or short? I think that most people would tell me that I am average, but this is only the case when sampling a large group, or everyone. But when I am on the LA bus going home, I feel very tall compared to the people around me. This is probably because 95% of the bus riders are Asian and tend to be shorter in stature. Conversely when I am walking to lunch with my petroleum engineering friends, I tend to feel short and very thin, as the guys I eat lunch with are all at least 6 inches taller than me. When I’m at church, I seem pretty average, maybe a little taller than average. When I’m around my biking friends, I feel a little overweight, because they are all super thin.
This just goes to show that height and weight, like many things, are pretty relative. This means that you must have a sample to judge against. Even though I say that I don’t care about what people think about my body (as do most people) I still have to be aware of other’s weight if I want to get a comparison so that I can rightly judge my height or weight. Not that height and weight are all that important, but I just use these ideas as an analogy for other possibly more important things in life. How do you know happiness without anger? How do you know good without bad? How do you know okay without awesome and terrible?
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