I am lucky. I am not one of the 30 million people in the US who suffer from an eating disorder. Despite my luck in avoiding an actual eating disorder, however, I have not been able to avoid the pressures of negative body image that affect so many young women. My own issues with negative body image started in my tween years—the age where the media finally begins to gain its full power by endlessly repeating the messages that self-worth should be defined not by the kind of person you are, but by your ability to get your body to conform to an implausible shape. We are taught from a young age that, “beauty is virtue,” and failure to conform to a constantly changing ideal for beauty automatically decreases your worth as a human being.
To compound the issue, the age at which we are most vulnerable, we are also taught that going through an “awkward” phase (or two or three), where you feel like an ugly duckling is to be expected. Unfortunately, life is not some after school special where the girl learns that she is beautiful after all and heads to homecoming after a makeover. So what does happen when you combine the feelings of awkward body development with the pressures of unrealistic body images provided by both the media as well as other influences such as sports or art? As someone who grew up obsessed with ballet, I can tell you that those feelings of awkwardness and inadequacy don’t just vanish over night as you grow up. It can be very difficult to escape feelings of inadequacy, especially when the foundations have been created during such an impressionable time.
Since the time I was about eleven, I have spent a truly depressing amount of time obsessing over my weight and appearance. There was honestly a time where I truly believed that most, if not all of my problems would be fixed if I could just become skinny enough to see my ribs through my chest and get rid of the “chicken wings” by my armpits. I remember watching a video about eating disorders in eighth grade health and thinking the true tragedy of the girl sharing her story with anorexia was that she hadn’t managed to get all that skinny—like it would have been worth it if she had managed to fit the desperately sought version of “skinny”. It’s pretty obvious that such hateful thoughts are very dangerous, especially for a thirteen-year-old. I am lucky that I had the parental support I needed to get me through such a difficult time in my life, and help me find the beauty in a body that is healthy rather than emaciated.
Many girls are not so lucky, and even if they are, that kind of thinking does not go away with the end of puberty. It has been a long road to learn to accept my body shape the way it is, and I still have days where I feel like a failure because of the way my genes have shaped me. It’s time for us to change the way we think about body image. While the steps we have seen companies take in making beauty more inclusive are important, I would argue that we need to take it a step further. It’s time to take away some of the power attached to the idea of “beauty”. While everyone should be able to feel beautiful, we need to spend more time reinforcing the idea that health (actual health not Instagram model/goddess fitness) and hard-work are more important than a subjective definition of beauty could ever be.
In case you looked in the mirror today and need to hear this, you, collegiette, are beautiful. You are simply gorgeous, but never forget you are also so much more than that. You are intelligent, hard-working, passionate, and loved by so many. Don’t let the haters get you down, you are important and successful just the way you are.