The following article is copied word-for-word from the Sept. 18, 1997, issue of The Oswegnian. The author, Alana Levin from Staten Island, graduated in May of 1999. This article’s republishing is intended to show how opinions may change or stay the same over the decades. The comic above is from the original article. The unaltered article is as follows:
As the eighteen-year-old freshman girl has her I.D. swiped, a meal is subtracted from her infinite full-board plan. The meal plan allows her to eat as much food as she wants. She gradualy pushes her blue tray down the metal bars of the dining hall, studying the food offered behind the steamy glass casing. Making her way down the food line, she grabs the blue tray and strides toward the salad bar. Her supple figure now approaches the salad bar as her waif mind chooses to douse a sparingly small portion of lettuce, peppers, onions, and broccoli onto her plate. She bypasses the croutons, allowing for just a tablespoon of fat-free Italian dressing.
It is the heart of the Great Depression and an eighteen-year-old girl stands on the snowy and frigid corner of Prince and Broadway. She can feel her hands beginning to freeze, while her empty stomach growls loudly. The girl looks down sadly at her worn crate full of green apples, which she is meant to sell to those passing on the avenue. She desires with serious deserpation to reach down and snatch one of the fruits for her own consumption. The girl thinks of her sick father, unable to work, and her mother, who is scrubbing the floors of the murky apartment building they live in. She thinks of her two younger brothers, still in school, hoping to achieve an easier existence. Apple in hand, she moans hopelessly, “Apples for sale,” as her empty stomach growls again.
We live in a society that strives to force us to fall victim to an overwhelming hypocrisy. As we muddle along through our days, it becomes evident that what is desired by the norm is what is most difficult to obtain. This era that offers an overabundance of food for the taking is the same era that creates an overabundance of anorexics for the destroying. We get lost in the aisles of the supermarket and flip through magazines at the checkout counter that advertise pictures of beauty, pictures soft skin and bones draped in the latest fashions.
In the years of the depression, when eating was a luxury, it was the rubenesque women who appealed to the large majority of men. Women who were thin and frail could be looked upon as unnatractive. If only they had existed in this era of plenty, they could be supermodels; prancing around the world who worships them.
There are ways in which one can deal with such an issue that turns our culture into an ongoing oxymoron. One can choose to follow what is expected and desired in this era. This would obviously entail rejecting the essential meals required by our bodies and accepting a way of thought that shrinks our bodies as well as our minds. Denying ourselves food would be choice in keeping with what is sexy. On the other hand, one can choose to be a soldier in the revolutionary war that requires the minds of true understanding and hearts of courage. By enlisting in this army of rebels, one is expected to not reject food, but reject those who show and tell us to.
It is extremely tempting as well as easy to fall victim to our society’s wants and desires. In doing this, we are also subsequently being taught to be followers, not leaders. In making the decision offered above, it is of extreme pertinence to consider which decision a leader would choose.
