the myth of the polished turd – first published 27 February 2013

A walk to work at the end of February 2013 got me thinking about the importance we place on appearances. Multi million pound industries have sprung up around anything that makes us look better on the outside. Everywhere you look someone is trying to sell you something to make you look younger, thinner or prettier. We are so obsessed with what’s on the outside we’ve forgotten about what lies within. There’s an old saying, ‘you can’t polish a turd,’ but there are a lot of people out there trying to sell us stuff to do just that…

27 February 2013

It started off cold and damp again today, not the best conditions for the walk to work but beggars can’t be choosers so I wrapped up warm, put my head down and got on with it. For a change I walked through the estate just the other side of the bridge. It isn’t the nicest estate if I’m honest, rather rough and run down but there was method to my madness, I wanted to take a closer look at the odd little row of shops there. These are not ordinary shops, with tills and staff and customers, these are painted shops. Years ago, when I used to work in the area, they were real but, one by one, they closed down. The culprits, recession, a spate of robberies and an area that just couldn’t attract new business. Now there is just one real shop left, a kind of general store. The others were boarded up for years but, recently, a transformation has occurred.

Quite when it happened I’m not sure but a while ago I noticed the metal shutters put up to stop squatters had been painted to look like shop fronts. It’s quite bizarre because, at first glance, it looks as if there is a row of thriving businesses but, on closer inspection, all but one is a facade. For the people living on the estate I guess it looks far nicer and brightens up the area. When I pass it makes me smile to see the baker from The Sugarloaf Bakery, dashing out of his shop with a tray of muffins, the poster on the window of V Goode News announcing Saints 10 Barca 0 (now that’s a match I’d love to see) and the grocer leaning on his broom in his shop doorway. It probably makes the locals smile too but, in the end it’s just form rather than function and I’m sure they’d rather have real shops.

This got me thinking about how much importance we place on appearances these days. Everything has to look right, our cars, our houses, our clothes and, most of all, our bodies. We look in the mirror and, when we don’t see something similar to the latest catwalk model or film star, we aren’t happy and we beat ourselves up about it. Never mind that even the model or celeb doesn’t really look like that without photoshop, makeup, hair stylists and a host of minions. Forget that she is probably twenty years younger, a couple of stone underweight and may have had tens of thousands of pounds worth of plastic surgery.

Don’t get me wrong, aesthetics was one of the main things that made me want to lose weight. Yes, I was worried about my health, being a hairs breadth from morbidly obese (on a good day) was a worry, but I was far more worried I was beginning to look like Mother. Much as I loved her there was no way I wanted to resemble her. Most people don’t embark on a weight loss journey because they want nice, fat free arteries, they do it because they want to look better. If it gets the ball rolling I’m not going to knock it but it shouldn’t be the only consideration. If it is, things are likely to go pear shaped, just like me.

Dieting with an eye only on appearances is unlikely to bring long term success. It needs to be about what lies within as well as what is on the surface. Otherwise the magic diet pills, the wonder shakes, the plastic, additive filled diet foods will win over good, fresh, healthy eating. The claims on the packet are seductive, the packets are shiny and nice. It all looks so good. The writing on that shiny packet makes such enticing claims.

“contains some of the most powerful, natural weight loss ingredients available.”
“fast and convenient way to lose inches and shape your figure in as little as 60 minutes!”
“Simply peel and stick to burn fat and lose weight. Read the reviews about our best selling patch ever!”
“an easy to prepare delicious strawberry or chocolate flavoured shake for fast weight loss results!”

Sorry to disappoint but it’s about as real as the skinny model or celeb with perfect skin and hair. First thing in the morning, with no make up, no special camera filters, no touching up on her spots, she probably looks worse than me, and that’s saying something!

When you start to think about it in terms of health it all starts to look a little different. The underweight model isn’t healthy when you see her sans makeup, her skin is grey and spotty, her hair is lank and dead looking, just like her eyes. She’s just like those shops, all painted facade with nothing good inside. She doesn’t eat properly, she hardly eats at all. If you want to really look good you need to work on the inside first because if the inside is empty or full of bad stuff the outside will never look good, not really. Yes, you can paint it up so it looks ok at first glance but it’s just a polished turd.

One of the few things I watch on TV these days is Mythbusters and they proved beyond doubt that you can in fact polish a turd, if you don’t believe me you’ll have to watch the show, but, at the end, after lots of effort, the turd might be nice and shiny but it’s still a turd. In the same way, you might lose wieght using crappy diet foods and magic pills (might being the operative word), or not eating properly but if you do you’re missing the point.

When people lose weight thinking only about appearances, even if they are successful, they often end up very dissatisfied. Because there was no focus on the health benefits, they become obsessed with every tiny little fault and magnify it. The weight may go but they still don’t look the way they wanted. They still have wrinkles, maybe their nose is a bit too big, or too small, their eyelashes aren’t like the ones in the mascara adverts, their boobs are too close to the floor, their bellies are a bit saggy, maybe they have a bit of lose skin, some bingo wings. Not long ago I watched a programme where a woman who had lost a massive amount of weight said she wished she was still fat because she had been left with lose skin! What is that all about?

There needs to be some perspective. Losing weight is not the great panacea, it doesn’t solve every problem. Doing it the healthy way can make life so much better. It hasn’t made me look twenty again, I don’t look like a size zero model, I don’t even want to, I have wobbly bits, I even have a little bit of lose skin (not too much because I lost my weight painfully slowly). What it has done is make me healthier, I can run up stairs, I can walk ten miles without even thinking about it, I don’t get so many aches and pains, my skin is clearer and a lot of my health problems have gone. I feel better, I’m more confident and I’m happier. Mostly it’s not about how I look, it’s about how I feel. These things have come from thinking about the inside. I’m happy being me, faults and all, I’d rather that than a polished turd or a facade, painted to hide the emptiness within.