If you’ve been on Facebook within the past week, which I would bet my first unborn child that all of you have, you’ve probably seen the picture above or similar ones being tossed around. This image is most prevalent this past week in particular because it is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. Many of us may not be aware of this because more often than not, this issue is taken lightly, overlooked and very commonly goes unnoticed. I say this from a college girl’s perspective- where admitting to starving yourself or throwing up after eating is considered embarrassing- and I do so for a reason. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders website, 91% of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting, 22% dieted “often” or “always” and 25% of college-aged women engage in bingeing and purging as a weight-management technique. Yes, these statistics are scary because they most likely mean that someone or a few people that you know very closely suffer from an eating disorder and you haven’t even realized.
If that thought shocks you a little bit, it should. The pressure to be thin and look a certain type of way is higher and running more rampant than ever now a days. With Size Zero Hollywood idols and stick thin model’s on every runway show and the Internet peddling the images of these lanky femmes in our faces every second, how can young women not feel the pressure to obtain a superficially thin frame? We grew up playing with a Barbie Doll that has completely unrealistic “real life” measurements that, lets be honest, resemble some kind of freak alien. Since most eating disorders begin and take place between the ripe young ages of 12 and 25, when women especially are most vulnerable to impression, its no surprise that the pressures rise when girls come to college. College is a time of finding yourself, experimenting, learning new things and gaining new experiences, which unfortunately, the statistics show, could very easily end up being an eating disorder.
The pressures to be thin and attractive are escalated when someone is trying to fit in or find a group to belong to. Many college students join sororities and fraternities that already have deep rooted expectations and standards of body images that aren’t spoken about but don’t have to be, because when enough people around you look a certain way, you subconsciously or consciously begin to want to look that way too. Since college is a time where many people experiment with different things of their choosing, ways to loose wait drastically and get skinny in order to fit in and be cool aren’t exceptions to the experimentation. This could have very dangerous consequences, when purging, dieting pills and using of laxatives spiral out of control.
As a college student and young woman myself, I would be lying if I said that there’s nothing I would change about my body and that I haven’t experienced pressure from peers to be skinnier and look better. The atmosphere can be smothering on a college campus, especially when living in a house with numerous girls. But I can’t help but ask myself, whose standards are we really trying to live up to anyway? I’m fine with my body but I would be even happier with it if I wasn’t constantly seeing images smacked across every media outlet of famous people who’ve been on diets since they were 10 or 18 year old Miley Cyrus’ selfies in her underwear with her pre-puberty, childlike body. Who ever said that having curves was a bad thing and looking like a five-year-old boy is hot? It’s true that back in the old days curvy women or I believe the word used to describe them was “plump,” were the most desirable ladies in the kingdom. What ever happened to those infatuations?
Below is another picture that I’ve recently come across, which I’m actually happy to see being smeared across the Internet.
This is a great way of portraying a completely refreshing thought that really is the truth. So with keeping this picture of Marilyn (one of the most iconic women in history don’t forget!) and the “Real Barbie” picture in mind, I ask you this National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, to consider rethinking your idea of pretty, your idea of perfect and your idea of a healthy body image and to ignore the unrealistic admirations that society has bred us to worship. It might be hard to find a new idol in Hollywood but there is hope. Many new starlets with actual talent are representing the healthy and curvaceous women on the red carpets and L.A. streets; think Sophia Vergara, Beyonce and the ultimate smoke bomb, Kim Kardashian. If we want to see a change in societies standards than we need to be the change ourselves and start admiring beautiful and healthy women who are natural and successful, not fragile twig-like bodies that eating disorders and body image issues feed on, for lack of a better word.