These days it is public knowledge that almost every magazine picture has been photo-shopped to resemble the “ideal” woman. However, these models that we are looking at and comparing our bodies and faces to, don’t even look that way in real life, so what is the “ideal” woman? Does she even exist?
Millennials were raised in a society where we were taught to love our bodies. The problem is no one taught us how.
As little girls, we idealized these magazines that our mothers and sisters had; we hoped that when we grew up, we would become models or the “perfect girl.” No one taught us that that reality doesn’t exist. From this, stemmed the thoughts that it is okay to be as skinny as a toothpick when this isn’t the case at all. Middle school kids, during an important developmental period, are growing up thinking they need to starve themselves to look the way they are “supposed to look.” In gym class they get laughed at for not running the mile fast enough, but at home their families tell them that they are beautiful. Who are they going to believe? The peers that have the most influential speech, or the parents that are always there? Nine times out of ten the girls will side with their friends in order to fit in. It’s just the way we were raised.
It is not just like this for girls. Guys are told that they need to be buff to get the attention from girls, and so they start on protein powder as soon as they are old enough to go to the mall by themselves. They see men in advertisements with washboard abs and the face of Channing Tatum, and think that they have to change who they are in order to fit in with the rest of the world. No one is there to teach them that it’s perfectly fine to be yourself, and love your body in the process.
Children are taught, mainly during puberty, that they need to fit these ideal body standards. These teachings leave a permanent mark in their brain. It’ll come up every time they eat, and lead to rethinking their food choices and exercise regimen. These thoughts do not disappear with age either! It only gets worse with time.
As we age, we think to ourselves that we should feel shameful for not fitting into the “right” standards normalized by the media, and this can have a horrible impact on our self-esteem and overall personality. As we reach college years, we all hope to become more athletic and healthier but we are soon overwhelmed with constant schoolwork, maintain a social life, while also trying to get enough sleep. Students soon realize that “gym time” has to be a sacrificed for something else. Typically, they’ll choose to sacrifice is either sleep or food. You can only imagine what this does to one’s overall health. The percentage of women that have eating disorders in college skyrockets from 15% to 40% after they enroll and classes start. It’s not just the fact they don’t have time to eat, it’s the fact that they were “told” not to.
We get it in our heads that we need to have this image of perfection for society and our peers around us. This is 100% a lie; we can be ourselves and love it in the process if we are taught correctly. With us surrounding ourselves with fake advertisements and unrealistic body shapes we will develop thoughts that we need to become stick thin. The easy way for this to happen is through starving ourselves or forcing ourselves to puke after we eat. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia only give us the easy way to lose weight while ruining our bodies and mental health in the process.
Eating disorders are actually classified as a mental illness, and in 2011, it was rated the mental illness with the highest mortality rate. This is not a hard fact to believe once you understand what happens to your body when you starve it of essential nutrients. These diseases start with your bones, weakening them over time, leaving them brittle and unable to support the body with age. Then it goes to the most important organ; the heart. As your body loses its muscle mass, your heart does too. It will get smaller and weaker, thus causing acute damage to your health. Essentially, no part of your body can escape the damage once you start to starve yourself. The longer you keep this mindset of attaining the “ideal body” the more damage you do to yourself.
We need to be taught how to love our bodies. Not just told that we should love them while advertisements shove perfection down our throats. There is absolutely nothing wrong with loving your body! It’s time to stop comparing ourselves to other people and gain that confidence that everyone deserves! You are beautiful; it’s about time you believe it.