Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 81 - Body Image + Social Media: Pulling Back From the Brink

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

In this episode, Danny talks about a disturbing trend on the social media network tik-tok and explores the potentially negative long-term ramifications of this type of content. There is also an honest conversation about the current trends and the normalization of new standards of what is/isn't a normal body.---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERESupport the Show.

Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I am your host Danny Matrenga and today's episode will be a significant departure from our traditional fitness Q&A. And before we get into it, I'd like to actually ask you guys in advance, as you listen to this, if you have any feedback for me, feel free to just DM me on Instagram or send me an email because I do want to have more conversations like this on the podcast, but I want to do so respectfully, tastefully, and to the actual appetite of my audience. I want to tailor it to the appetite of you guys as much as I can. But recently, I was sent a TikTok video. And this is kind of the disclaimer, the preface, the prologue. So as you guys go, settle in, whether you're listening in the car,

maybe you're listening on your walk, maybe you're on a treadmill, maybe you're like me and you're one of the weirdos who actually lifts weights while listening to a podcast. But settle in because today's conversation is as much of a... Oh, Cooper, my pup, wants up on the couch. I'm going to let him up real quick. All right. So now we are settled back in with Cooper resting on my lap for a little kind of exercise in critical thinking. And so again, disclaimer, preface, backstory, here we go. So about three days ago, I was sent a TikTok video

that had been produced by a plastic surgeon operation, plastic surgery operation. I don't think that this was posted by a surgeon or anybody affiliated with the office's individual account. It was just posted by the office's account. And it was a video that showed a large glute booty area. And the TikTok goes on to say, I found a workout routine and I worked out five days a week. The routine focused on the glutes. All of this is being shown while she's doing some relatively low weight, glute biased exercises with really bad technique and she goes nothing was working So I got a brazilian butt lift and on the left hand side of the video you see all of the

Nurse practitioners front office people whomever they may be in from the actual plastic surgery office account Nodding along as she's saying this stuff isn't working and then they get all happy at the end when she says she got a brazilian butt lift and so now Uh I have to go into the disclaimer portion. I do not care. And again, you guys might not like me here because I don't want this to get too political, but I do not care what a woman does with her body. That goes all the way from a nose ring all the way to an abortion.

That ain't any of my business. And I am not going to cast judgment against a woman, a man anywhere in between who wants to make a change to the way their body looks because it will make them feel better about themselves. That is totally okay. I think it's fine. And I'd love to know if you guys agree with me on that. Because I do think that it's actually an area of conversation that's become pretty contentious. A lot of the people who rally the hardest against, you know, hey, Photoshop, women's body issues, you know, unrealistic expectations for what a woman's body should look like. Some of the voices that say stuff like that are also the first to rail against anyone bashing plastic surgery. I actually made a post this morning on my Instagram that I had to take down. It was a very interesting post. It said,

I'm just going to float it out there, but if she has a huge butt and no hamstring, quad, back, or core development, it might be fake. It's pretty hard to develop a great set of glutes. It's even harder to do it without growing other stuff. I'm just calling it like it is. And that post got shared a ton in like the first 10 minutes. It had several hundred likes, dozens of shares and a lot of comments. And when I checked the comments, it was a 50-50 split of women commenting, I think that's awesome. I think that's a really, really great post. I love the message. And then the other 50% was women saying, you know, this is none of your business. How dare you say anything about a woman's body, which was not the message I was going for. That's why I had the disclaimer earlier in the episode

saying I genuinely do not care. But I do think that we have to begin to draw a line here, and here's where I have the issue. It goes back to that TikTok. That is a company that is profiting on misinformation. They are saying that this woman's glute routine did not work, so she now has an awesome butt, thanks only to the Brazilian butt lift.

It was an ineffective workout routine. It's almost comical, given the woman is hip thrusting like a 10-pound dumbbell. You're not going to build any glutes hip thrusting a 10-pound dumbbell. But within that, there's also the obviously nefarious intention that you are trying to convince women who are improving their lives using exercise, whether their goal is to grow their glutes or not, that they can just go get plastic surgery. And I think that that really subverts the real message that we should be communicating to women, which is that it's

oh fucking K to work out and not give a shit about growing your glutes. Maybe you only want to grow your glutes. Maybe you want your arms to be more toned, quote unquote. Maybe you want to be healthier. Maybe you want some fucking confidence. Who the hell knows, right? That ain't my business either. It's one of the many things about a woman's body that's none of my business. However, I think it's a very subversive message that actually hurts women more than it helps to make a video implying that, and this is the obvious implication here, that a Brazilian butt lift will just fix all of your problems, okay? Understand that if somebody has a problem with the way they look, there might be an underlying self-esteem issue that even getting an actual like aesthetic change via plastic surgery might not fix.

It might actually be better for your self-esteem to go to the gym, build some strength, build some confidence, build a routine and build your glutes in the process and feel as though you've accomplished something. We don't know what's best for any person, right? So that's the other implication. Implying that exercise is ineffective, which is scientifically untrue, and I think subverts the message of health first, which should always be what we promote to everybody, in my opinion, but especially women. And then I think we're also just kind of going along with this narrative that you can do whatever you want to your body to be happy,

which I think is cool. But we're missing that exercise is good for your body and it can help make you happy. And one of the things that I wanted to discuss was, again, I made that post. It got incredible traction. I had to take it down because I didn't want my message to be misconstrued. I wanted to use my platform here to talk about that. And I'm not worried about like getting in trouble or going to Instagram jail or getting shadow banned or whatever. If that happens, it happens. But what I am worried about is that we can't have a fundamentally constructive discussion about what are the potential negative ramifications from projection of obviously or even non-obviously augmented physiques for men and women across social media. So that's what I want to talk about today. And I want to just pose

a few ideas for you guys to think about, maybe think about these critically. Consider this like a sociology of, you know, social media driven aesthetic desires and pursuits class, like a little micro class. But one of the things that I had thought about was, I think it's totally okay to get any form of body augmentation as a woman, whether that's a breast reduction, a breast augmentation, a Brazilian butt lift, liposuction, Botox, whatever, you name it. I think that that's okay. I think that that's 100% the prerogative of the person who's doing it, man,uction, Botox, whatever, you name it. I think that that's okay. I think that that's 100% the prerogative of the person who's doing it, man, woman, whatever. But I do think that there

becomes an ethical dilemma that's very clear and hard to miss when people start profiting off of those physiques or bodies or faces or whatever without being transparent about the methods behind which they went to achieve said physique. So I will give you an example, and this is why I referenced big booty programs in the tweet I did about this exact thing. I think if you have a woman who's had a Brazilian butt lift, and she is selling a glute-specific exercise program, I think that one, she's peddling misinformation. The implication there is that this is the workout program that she did to build her glutes, right?

Whether they say one thing or the other, that's the implication there. That's what people are buying, especially young, impressionable women. are buying, especially young, impressionable women. And you are selling a product that will almost certainly fail the person who is buying it. Even if they do it from start to finish and they get some results, right? And maybe they're happy with their results. They probably won't be your results, no matter how many times that person does that program. Because what you neglected to include in the disclaimer within that program is that you had a Brazilian butt lift. And this type of stuff is really common. There are a lot of women on the internet

who have had their bodies changed through plastic surgery that sell programs and they do not disclaim the fact that a lot of the reason their physique looks the way it does is because of these surgeries. And for every one of those women, there's two dudes on steroids doing the same thing. I'm not going to rail on women here because men are just as bad, probably worse at taking steroids, getting amazing physiques, selling programs and neglecting to communicate to their audience that part of the reason they look is because of the drugs. Some guys do a great job of disclosing this. I understand that because steroids are illegal, you can't necessarily, at least here in the US, you can't necessarily put that stuff out there all the time.

A lot of people say things like, well, anybody with half a brain could obviously tell that the guys on steroids are that the girl's butt's fake, but that's not true. It's just not true. That is a complete, complete lie, especially when we talk about where I found this original piece of content, which was TikTok, where the audience is extremely young, extremely impressionable, and probably has absolutely no functional understanding of how physiology works, how the body responds to exercise training, what is and isn't realistic for them to achieve. They just see and interpret what they see through their 11 to 16 year old brain to the best of

their abilities. And I think that we're hurting those kids by allowing this type of content to be continuously posted without any form of disclaimer or without these personalities, influencers, whomever, whatever you want to call them, at least making, you know, time to discuss whether or not they are taking a substance or they have had their body augmented. So I think it's this kind of shadow side of our industry that is going in the wrong direction because I think that we're seeing these Brazilian butt lift surgeries become increasingly more common. I can't log into my Instagram ever and not see a woman on my explore page who has clearly had midsection abdominal fat removed, added to her hips, and she has a huge big old

hip. She's going for the golden ratio, big booty. They look great to me, right? As a heterosexual man who sees a woman's body and can tell in my brain very quickly whether or not I would be attracted to that woman, I can tell you that these types of surgeries that can produce these types of bodies are attractive to me. Some people say, oh, that's fake. I don't like it. Okay, that's fine. I'm not going to lie to you. When I see that, my brain sees that golden ratio of tiny little waist, big old hips, big booty, and it's not mad about it. Let me put it to you that way. And so again, this type of stuff is very, very pervasive. It's going to find its way into your eyes no matter what you do.

And I just see a lot of it on social media. So I know that it's hitting people's eyes. Almost all of my content is related to fantasy football or strength and conditioning. So those pictures of women really pop out. And I don't spend any time on TikTok and I very rarely scroll on Instagram, but I find it. So I know that for young women and young men who are looking at that stuff all the time, you can't escape it. And so, you know, these, this is what I believe to be the reality of the current landscape. And I don't know what we can necessarily do about it as an industry, except for ask for more transparency. And I don't think

that's going to happen. I don't think we can actually expect people on social media who run a brand around their body, if they are making money, selling misinformation, right? Like maybe it's a dude on steroids saying he's natural and that this is his program and diet, or a woman with a Brazilian butt lift selling a booty plan and her supplements and saying this is how she looks the way she looks. She has a big old booty and a tiny tummy because she does band work and takes a fat burner. We cannot expect those people to just wake up one day and feel the ethical, moral compass inside their body, do a complete complete 180 and they just start being

entirely transparent and disclosing everything they've had done to their body so that their audience can decide whether they want to support them financially or not knowing that that program isn't going to be as effective that ain't gonna happen these people are not gonna do that they'll never tell the truth they just won't there's too much in it for them not to. and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode.

And so we run into this dilemma where it's becoming increasingly common. These surgeries are becoming increasingly more common. Everybody who sees it is drawing some form of conclusion about it, whether they have a discerning eye like myself or they're a younger person. And I don't think we should be judging these people's decisions to have their bodies changed, decisions to take steroids. That's none of my business. That's not hurting really anybody but themselves. But we do have to kind of go, okay, once you start trying to profit on this and once you start amassing an

audience and not disclosing this stuff, you are going to profit on this and once you start amassing an audience and not disclosing this stuff like you are going to modify people's interpretation of what a human body should look like and i'm not i am not the biggest proponent of you know uh railing against women giving other women or men giving other men or men having unrealistic expectations or women women having unrealistic expectations of what a man's or a woman's body should look like. I haven't done enough research into that area. I just know how I feel, which is that I feel like a lot of where this stuff comes from is social media. And I think that the algorithms actually do a really good job of targeting women with

images of other women's bodies and men with images of other men's bodies and women's bodies. And I do think that that might contribute to a population level disconnect as to what is a realistic body image for a man or a woman in this country like i i do think that it has been modified do i think that it's uh you know something we can pull back from the brink of i really don't know and i'm getting a little bit concerned because now this type of content is popping up on tiktok which is occupied by a lot of young people. And it's going to change the way young people look at bodies. And we know that young people are watching more pornography than ever before. We even know that they're actually having less sex. So it's kind of this weird thing where we know young people are seeing bodies and they're experimenting, but they're not actually

connecting with other young people because that's a rabbit hole to go down. But we're getting a lot of unrealistic body image stuff hitting the retinas of very impressionable people. And while not everybody's going to interpret that and go, that's the only way I should look, a lot of people will be confident and see right through that. A lot of people won't. And I worry about where we go from here as these types of augmentations become more popular and they become more normalized, right? Like I remember in the fitness space five, six years ago, every girl was getting a boob job because it was the thing to do. If you're an active young woman and you're exercising a lot and you don't necessarily have a genetic predisposition to

have bigger breasts, you're going to probably burn some body fat and a lot of that might actually come from that area. And if it does come from that area and you want to have larger breasts, a breast augmentation makes a lot of sense. And I think nobody should be judged for doing that. If you're working out that hard to achieve a physique that you want, why the heck not? Make sure the whole physique looks how you want. That's totally cool. And breast augmentation was really, really popular. Like all the trainers I knew who were women got it. A lot of the influencers who were women I knew got it and it was normal. But now what I'm seeing is a new like breed of female models on Instagram who are getting Brazilian butt lifts, having liposuction from the midsection added to the hips. And that kind of seems to be just as popular now

for a lot of people as a boob job. And so I think it might even become increasingly more popular because we're still caught in that like post Kardashianbutt, fetishizing, obsessed area. And I worry about what this stuff is going to do, especially if people are doing this in place of exercising. Because I think that exercise is something that more people should do, whether or not their goal is big glutes. And if we have businesses like the one that I mentioned earlier in the TikTok, actively working to dissuade people from exercising and actively encouraging them to augment their bodies with surgery instead, I don't think we're helping these people be healthy. I don't think we're helping these people elevate their self-esteem as much as we might be purporting, right? I think that we might

be people, I say we, but I'm not a part of this, but people might be actually doing a little bit of harm here. And I worry about, you know, hey, I might have just seen this and maybe it's the only post like it on the internet, but I doubt it. And I don't want this stuff to continue if we can pull back from the brink. And I don't know what that looks like. Maybe you guys can tell me. What do you think about the, you know the requirement for disclosure if you're selling anything related to your physique, whether you use performance enhancing drugs or whether you've had a body augmentation surgery? Maybe that's relevant. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's relative to the post or relative to the product being sold. Maybe it's not. I think you should have

to have a disclaimer if your photo has been photoshopped and your body has been manipulated. I don't think you should need one if you use like a filter. But if your body has been manipulated, I believe that to be a fair thing that we should expect some type of disclosure there if the photo has been edited. And look, I don't know how you enforce this. Social media is the Wild West and it's a really big issue already because we can't police it the way we we should and if you actually want to like do a little bit of research into this area look into the country myanmar and facebook just google myanmar and facebook and it will blow your mind as to what happens when social media grows outside of its kind of scale of control

um and it already is here it already is here. It already is here in America with the amount of fake news, bot-driven content, deep fakes, artificially intelligent created content, kind of designed to manipulate the American political landscape and create divide. And we're seeing this happening in countries like russia and iran and china that have a vested interest in manipulating the united states kind of view of the political landscape that's again off topic but again this podcast is going to be different i am getting really i'm starting to get exponentially more concerned about the direction that that this is headed because it affects young people it affects affects people in middle age. It affects people in relationship. It affects single people. People all take this content in

and it does start to shift the way your brain looks at bodies and the way you feel about your own body and the bodies of the people around you. Maybe it's the body of your partner. Maybe it's the body of a potential partner. Maybe it's the body that you see in the mirror every day. We start to change the way we look at this stuff. And I'm not saying that normalizing it is a bad thing. I'm not saying that promoting it and making money for your business, selling it is a bad thing. But what I am saying is when I start to see exercise leveraged in a negative light or projected as being futile in a pursuit of a healthier, better body and that you're better off getting surgery, I have a problem with it. And so I took my post down because I

didn't want it to be misconstrued by anybody thinking I was making a judgment about a woman who decided to do this. Again, I am effectively apathetic about that. If that's what you want to do, that's fine. Like I'm not going to judge you. There are pieces of my body that I would absolutely change if I wasn't too big of a pussy to judge you. There are pieces of my body that I would absolutely change if I wasn't too big of a pussy to get under a knife. I'll tell you that right there. And if I didn't have such a positive relationship with exercise and think that it was something I could change there, I would do it. So I'm not one to cast any judgment, but I do worry about this stuff being leveraged for the profiteering of less than ethical people who

decide to just be either directly ambiguous or overtly spread misinformation about how they achieve the body they achieved. I think it's a problem. I'd love to hear what you guys say. I think this is a conversation with me talking to myself that I would love to expand upon by maybe having a woman to talk to about this who has had some of these procedures as well as maybe a woman who has opted not to. I think that might make for a better, more well-rounded discussion where we could talk about some of the emotional ins and outs that go into making these decisions and some of the ramifications and positives that come from getting procedures or not getting procedures like this. But, um, I just wanted specifically today to touch on social media, body image correlated with social media and some of the content, uh, that's out there that is

clearly creating change and driving people to have their bodies augmented either one way or another. So guys, thanks for listening. If you think this was a valuable conversation, if you gathered anything from this, if hearing me talk about it made you feel better about the way you look or made you, you know, feel like it was cool that you had a procedure done or cool that you didn't have a procedure done, whatever. I'd love to hear if you had a problem with it again, just send me a message. I'd love to glean as much as I can from this. So you guys have a good one and we will chat soon on the next episode. It's December 14th and that one's going to get recorded on December 17th. So you guys have a good rest of your day. you