Black and Blue and White All Over?

 

 

 

Think you are seeing two llamas of differing heights?  Think again.  While we're not saying one llama is blue and one is white...or one is gold and one is black...like that dress...what we are saying is that both llamas are exactly the same size.

"It's an optical illusion" stated Dr. Rafe McPherson of Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  "It's like when our cones and rods can't distinguish what colour that godawful looking dress is which is making the rounds on the Internet.  Whatever colour it is, you can rest assured it's still an ugly dress.  The llamas, on the other hand, are quite the opthalmological enigma.  They look different in size because of the perspective of the camera.  They are, pretty much, give or take an inch or two, the exact same size."

Black or White or Gold or What?

(Llamas - exactly the same height.)

"Our eyes are trained, from an early age, to see things the way the brain wants to perceive them," Todd Renquist of Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, stated.  "Sometimes they are completely wonky and it takes a good whack on the head or a bit of Photoshopping to make one...well, see the light...perspectively speaking."

It is refreshing to know in a world quick to make something go viral that not all things are easily passed around.  The photo known to a select few as "Bob Inhales His Own Phlegm" has been such a secret on the Internet that a Google search doesn't even turn anything up. 

"'Bob Inhales His Own Phlegm' is one of the best kept secrets of both eye specialists and photography, I'm talking serious photography buffs, for about three decades now," Nathan Roberts of the Rotterdam Eye Hospital in the Netherlands, said.  "It's mesmerizing in its own way.  I have a gelfotograf of it in my office and my colleagues often bring by their newest interns to see it.  It's a marvel to behold.  I can't really say anything other than that about it - you really have to SEE it to believe it.  It defies explanation."

So, while the world ponders if it's black or blue or white or gold, keep in mind that phlegm has been every single colour of the rainbow, and then some.

You CAN Dance if You Want To

Now, I am a tiny thing and never had a weight issue...but I honestly can understand some issues bigger/fatter/fluffier people go through. "How would you know, Mariann?" you might be asking me about now.

My best friend in grade and high school was really overweight. Back then, in the 1970s, it seemed more people were of the thin variety, at least in Jersey where I lived. I would hear all the nasty comments people would say to her when we were in school and when we went places together.  It was especially brutal when we went to the beach...the comments nearly made me cry. I don't know how she endured them, but she did.

She was also an excellent gymnast and superbly graceful in general. I would LOVE to see more people who weren't in so-called "perfect" dancer bodies on television and in movies.

I'm an avid classic film lover...we're talking from the beginning of film here...not talking the 1970s or '80s. Films from the 1930s, especially, had a lot of chorus line premises and dancers in them. You know what the first thing I notice when I'm watching any of these? They aren't totally buff and they have little flabby areas on their legs and tummies -- and, in my opinion, it makes it all so much more worthwhile and enjoyable to see.

I think if more people were subjected to seeing plus-size models and bigger dancers...we'd have a more realistic and satisfying approach to how we all perceive ourselves when we look in the mirror. I think it's high time we placed more "weight" on how we are inside and how we treat people than on how fantastic we look half naked.

Here's the story which inspired me to write this:

People With Fat Bodies Went On Stage Because They Wanted To See How People Would Respond