The new year comes with so much joy, the idea of having a fresh start to rectify the mistakes of last year, writing down new goals and objectives and having another go at trying to attain an ideal body type. That’s right! It has become a routine. Every new year people find the motivation to work on their bodies to make them “beautiful.”
Videos of mostly women titled “watch me glow up,” referring to them going through an incredible transformation. This then shows a video with a collection of gym footage, eventually leading to a cinched waist, sharper jawline and extreme weight loss, in short, a body that fits the standard. The comments are then filled with people celebrating this weight loss. Which, in a sense, is saying congratulations on becoming pretty?
The persons before pictures show them looking sad, whereas the after images have evident elation. Were they not happy before? We can argue that bullying may have played a part in this, whether cyber or in-person; almost every woman who is not the ideal size has received some dirty stares or has been told a nasty comment even if the person didn’t intend to be offensive. ”You should go to the gym.” “Maybe have a salad” and on the other side of the coin “Are you on a diet?” ”You should eat more.” “Why not have a burger?” Women are either called out for being “too big” or “too skinny.”
But these ideas of what is considered beautiful and what isn’t have been fed to us from such a young age by various media. In comic books and television programs, the women are drawn with an unbelievable and unrealistic body shape. The women that are considered excellent and desirable are given pleasurable features. Whereas the women that play the role of a villain are made plus sized with a big nose and lots of exaggerations of what should be considered a normal body part, making them undesirable. The media goes a long way in creating people who find it hard to love themselves. Almost everything we consume glorifies an ideal body type and considers any other body type ugly. The media is handing out mirrors of dysmorphia to us from an early age. As a result, people spend millions in time and money trying to do insane diets and unbelievable amounts of workouts to fit a standard that will probably change. It is like chasing the wind.
As a result of wanting to fit into this idea of perfection, people make their new year resolutions with the ultimate goal being working out or wanting to get a certain number on the scale. There is no harm in wanting to do so, but my argument is that people should want to do it because they love their bodies and not because they hate them. Lindsay Kite, the co-founder of Beauty Re-defined, said that a woman is mostly seen as an ornament during one of her Ted talks. They are suggesting that the more beautiful a woman is, the more desirable. She mentions that girls and women are suffering because of the problematic ways in which beauty is being defined and because they are being defined by beauty: body first and people second.
It is difficult to strive to be more than just a beautiful woman according to an appearance in this beauty-obsessed world but not impossible. This year instead of challenging yourself to conform to the unrealistic ideals of beauty, let us give ourselves the real challenge, that is loving ourselves regardless and understanding that we are more than just objects to be seen as beautiful or not.