It’s all packed into one picture/drawing, the ugly old hag, and the beautiful, young woman. Both are present in the same drawing, one effectively hiding in plain sight. But if you focus on the old hag, you’ll be unable to simultaneously see the beautiful young woman. Conversely, if you focus on the beautiful young woman, you’ll be unable to simultaneously see the old hag.
Psychologists suggest that what you’re able to see is heavily dependent on what you expect to see. Thus if you expect to see the old hag, then the old hag is what you’ll see. On the other hand, if you expect to see the beautiful young woman, the beautiful young woman is what you’ll see.
How Does That Apply to OPYOW?
Now, what in the world does this well known optical illusion have to do with Operation Pull Your Own Weight? As it turns out, a lot! If you’re thoroughly soaked in and effectively indoctrinated by the omnipresent suggestion that childhood obesity is an extremely complicated problem with multiple causes, then it stands to reason that it requires an extremely complicated, sophisticated (and so expensive) solution. That’s what you’ll expect to hear when someone talks about solutions to this problem.
Under these presumptions, when someone offers a solution that’s simple, functional, naturalistic, and affordable, it’s almost impossible to see because it contradicts your expectations. If, upon hearing the term childhood obesity you automatically slip into a weight watcher’s mode and you view the problem from a rehab perspective, then it’s almost impossible to see a solution that’s built on prevention. If you’ve bought into the claim that BMI is a good (instead of just cheap) body composition measurement tool, it’ll be almost impossible to accept a solution that fails to deliver before and after BMI data.
The Emperor’s New Clothes…Right?
In other words, if you expect to see the emperor’s beautiful, new clothes, you’ll willingly go along with the admiring crowd instead of the young child who clearly sees the nakedness of the situation. If you expect to see the old hag you’ll be unable to see the beautiful, young woman. And if you’ve bought into the status quo’s experts and the media that feeds on their every syllable, it will be almost impossible for you to even entertain, let alone see a simple, natural, functional, and affordable solution like OPYOW, because it’s so contradictory to your expectations.
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