Nearly everywhere you look, there are new advertisements urging you to buy this pill or that glorified treadmill that will supposedly give you that "snatched" body you've always dreamed of. With sparkling celebrities such as Jillian Michaels, Michael Jordan, and Gabby Douglas attesting to their results, it's hard not to believe them.

It seems simple enough; you pay "x low payments of $19.99" for a pill (or whatever) that supposedly melts fat like butter! It sounds too good to be true, right?

That's probably because it is. From childhood, it is instilled upon us that men should be these big, brawny, immovable walls of muscle with washboard abs, and biceps and triceps the size of tree trunks. Otherwise, you're not REALLY considered a "real man." I've seen this myself many times over, most recently with recruitment for Greek organizations. Whenever I tell someone I'm interested in rushing and possibly joining a fraternity, more often than not I am met with incredulous looks and remarks similar to "But you don't seem (read as look) like the type of guy that would join a frat!" (I don't know how much you know about me, but you can scroll up or down to my profile picture and see that I most certainly do not fit the aforementioned criteria to be a "real man.") The same is more than true for women as well, with the bar of excellence set astronomically high. The thing is, marketers like to pick up on these standards and feelings of inadequacy and use them to play into our emotions to manipulate us into buying whatever they want us to. Just last Thursday, in my Introduction to Philosophy class, my professor told us about the scariest man he had ever met. "He lived just across the hall from me, and he was nice enough," he told us. "But he was a marketing major, and he always said 'I can make people want whatever I want them to.'"

I'm sure many of you reading this are familiar with the concept of the "Freshman Fifteen." If not, the name is fairly self explanatory- Fifteen pounds that students gain their first year of college. The thing is, it's just a load of bullshit... Not necessarily the fifteen pound gain, but the fact that people think it matters. Just because you may not fit society's version of an ideal man or woman, that doesn't make you any less of one.

When we look at ourselves and think "Damn, I'm too fat/skinny to be considered (insert here)," we must ask ourselves why we think the things we do. If you think you're beautiful, you are. If you think you need to lose a little weight, go for it- but that doesn't make you any less beautiful. (Just be very careful. If weight loss isn't done in a very certain way, it can cause very serious repercussions to a person's health. So you may want to talk with your doctor to find a plan that works best for you.) If you think you're too skinny, try to gain a little weight (again, talk with your doctor and do it in a way that works best for you), but you're still beautiful.

Don't buy into something just because you're told to.