I think I should give myself the 'beetus For years I had been led to believe that I was too skinny. A comment here or there about "blowing away in a stiff wind" or being referred to as "that skinny guy" was plenty enough to convince me that I was the oddity. I felt self conscious about my thin arms and torso and when I'd wear tighter shirts or t-shirts I would feel like people were staring and judging. This went on from about high school to age 23 or so. Then I started to get this crazy idea. What if standards were shifting? That so many people are getting so fat that public perception of what is skinny, normal or fat is changing? What if fat people bullied everyone so much that no one dares call them fat, while fatties shame thin people out of envy? To test this theory, I'll need something that is not based on perception but rather on science and mathematics, such as the body mass index. To use myself as an example, I'm 5'11" and weigh 145lbs. That gives this "skinny" fellow a BMI of about 20. To be at the top of the underweight range, I'd have to be 10-15 lbs lighter; most would agree that that would be too thin and that currently I am normal. "Hold the phone!" I can hear the fatties say through a hail of saliva and dorito fragments, "BMI is not a good measurement of fatness!!!! My BMI is 42 but I lift everyday and it's all muscle! Do you even lift BRO!" OK fine, lets use waist-to-height ratio then. With a height of 71 inches and a waist size of 32 inches, that works out to about 45 and is well within what is considered normal and healthy. According to most scales, I would need to loose 3-4 inches from my waist size to be considered too slim. I'd love to see where most of these so called body builders register on this scale -- you know, since BMI is so inappropriate. The only criticism I ever hear about BMI is from fatso's. So the mathematics/scientific route checks out, why don't we get a little subjective. Watch a documentary or any video with real footage from the '70s, '80s and even early '90s. Heck, pull out your own family home-movies. It's easy to see that regular people were slimmer back then. Watch the equivalent from today and it looks like the camera added on a lot more than 10 pounds. The skinny people are fat, the fat people are fat and beyond that people are fatter than ever. So with my dilemma of being a normal guy with an unwanted perception of being thin (and weak, sickly, etc...) where do I go from here? The way I see it, I've got a few options: a. I can develop an eating disorder, just like my fellow westerners have, and put on lots of fat so that I can appear normal. b. I can follow the example set by the internet-culture at large, get even more thin and seek affirmation by posting pictures to tumblr of words like "buff" written on my spaghetti-arms. c. I can acknowledge that I have an insecurity and face it head on (healthily) by strength training enough to become visibly muscular. Tough decision. Edit: Confession time. I chose option C a few weeks ago. I'm already lifting twice as much weight and can't seem to make myself sore the next day. I've always had pretty good muscle definition but now I'm having new muscles pop up in new places. I'm amazed at your responses to this post; this definitely ain't that other site.