Growing up I was constantly thinking about how I looked. “Do I look fat in this shirt?” “Wow my thighs look so fat in this.” I was never good enough for myself. I was fixated on the need to maintain a certain weight to be “skinny”. No one understood what I saw when I looked at myself in the mirror because when I looked in the mirror, I saw an obese girl that couldn’t pull off that crop top or wear a tight shirt, to others I was crazy. I would spend my days obsessing on my eating, working out and running and maintaining an unhealthy lifestyle that I thought would make me pretty.
This internal battle started my summer going into senior year of high school, and continued for years to come. I would get a natural high when I was told that I looked like I lost weight or that I looked skinny. I was constantly chasing that high that would never satisfy me. I don’t know where this came from, maybe it was society telling me that skinny is more attractive, or just my surrounding people but in my head, I needed to be skinnier. I became obsessive and the scale was my best friend and worst nightmare. I would be on my second workout and step on the scale, and sit there and cry when the numbers popped up.
I was trying to find my self worth and belonging through a number, and I never found it. I was trying to make myself feel like I was good enough or pretty enough. At the end of the day I was never going to get what I wanted out of it. I try to think of what my “perfect body” would look like and all I can think of is a VS model or someone who’s a size 0 with no butt or hips, which is so unrealistic for me. Society instills what they think is the “perfect body” into girl’s heads at such a young age.
We need to rise above it and teach young girls that beauty comes in different shapes in sizes, so they don’t end up skipping out on their favorite meals or skipping out on another piece of pizza based off of fear go gaining weight. Everyone deserves that chance to celebrate themselves and be able to look in the mirror and feel comfortable in the skin that they’re in.