Today’s Musings May 1, 2007
Posted by radicaldaffodils in Hotei, body image, gods, other bloggers, t-shirts.add a comment
I’m perusing my bloglines account and saw this post on “A Minister’s Musings.” I think I may want to expand the thinking I expressed in the comments, but right now my knee aches and I’m just not in the mood for deep thinking. The t-shirt mentioned in that post:
“I have the body of a god. Unfortunately, it’s the Buddha.”
Like many things, this “saying” is a jumping-off point for a discussion of body image. Why is having the Buddha’s shape (or, more accurately, as pointed out by RevWik, Hotei’s shape*) automatically “unfortunate”? If it’s the body of a god, doesn’t that imply a sort of “greatness” to that body? I could probably come up with a handful of myths where the god’s body failed them in some way, but it would take some work. Fenris Wolf biting off Tyr’s hand doesn’t count, either.
All in all, it reminds me of another t-shirt about which I have similarly ambivalent-leaning-toward-positive feelings: “I’m in shape. Round is a shape.”
Well. It certainly is.
* This is not the best link in the world, but as mentioned above I’m really not in the mood to go poking around just at the moment.
