Growing up I envied the teenagers who worked at Hollister, no it wasn’t because they had a job. It was their low-rise size zero jeans and skin-tight tops. I wasn’t like them; I had matured quicker than other girls. I would go home and Google if my body was normal. Then I came across a Yahoo answer that still sticks with me today. A person asked how to know if you are fat. And a stranger answered, “if your thighs go over the toilet seat when you sit down, you are fat”. As a pre-teen, I instantly looked down at my legs, spilling over the side of the narrow chair I sat on and convinced myself I was fat.
Times are always changing, and with that, the ideal body image is constantly being changed. With something that is always evolving, is it even ideal? One moment it’s a trend to be lean and the next it’s to be thick. We’re constantly fed by social media of how our bodies should or should not look like. Social media has the ability to glamorize everything, whether it’s drinking apple cider vinegar for a slim waist or vitamins to give you a bigger behind. We grow up with unrealistic expectations of how a body should look instead of learning to love our own. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, 95% of people with eating disorders are from the ages 12 to 25. This is the crucial age that involves so much change in our lives. While navigating through early adulthood, many are still plagued with the anxiety of how their bodies look. Loving our bodies is easier said than done, but wouldn’t it be helpful if the photoshopping wasn’t so common?
While there’s more representation of all different body types today, there can still be so much more work to be done in allowing young people to easily fall in love with their bodies. I hope that there will come a day when we don’t compare our bodies to unrealistic expectations.
I can gladly say, that at twenty-one years old, I have grown to love my body for how it is. I don’t compare myself with others, as hard as that can get with social media nowadays. While there are days where I feel down, your body deserves to be loved. While you evolve and change, your body is doing the same. Shouldn’t we be more loving towards it?
Sources:
National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. “Eating Disorders Statistics.” ANAD. Accessed February 24, 2014, http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/.
Unruly Bodies 
I loved reading your post! many of your statements resonated with me. I have never been someone with a thin figure, so I can definitely relate to envying others for being slim even though all bodies are beautiful. I loved your quote when you questioned what an ideal body really is if this standard is constantly changing. This makes me wonder what our society and beauty standards would look like without social media influences. Do you think we would still envy others for their body type without the constant voices on social media telling us what we should or shouldn’t look like?
Thanks for sharing!
I think your experience is sadly one that many people have had. I know I would be considered a small person but even I struggle deeply with size. Even something as simple as number sizes can look different on different bodies. A size 2/4 on a tall person compared to a short person are very different and I am only 5ft. It’s so easy to get caught up in number sizes, weights, calories, etc. Especially when society highly emphasizes appearance it can really take a toll on a person if you give it too much energy. I can remember going into Victoria’s Secret or Abercrombie as a kid with my mom and thinking, so will I look like them? You have this imagine ingrained in your mind of what you should look like and then middle school and high school hit and it feels like a crisis. Why don’t I look like that?
Loved your topic for this week because it’s something a lot of younger and older go through. It takes some women so long to love their bodies and I’m so happy for you that you’re have learned to love your’s. I appreciated the tone you delivered your message in it felt very comforting. I recently found out that a size 4-6 is considered “too big” for runway models and that was one of the things I was thinking about reading your post. It really had me baffled to find that out because media is literally abusing us mentally. It’s even crazier that men don’t have to deal with this on the level we have to experience it. Men will never have a size or age attached to them. Whereas for women it’s “yea Megan turned 30 and started gaining weight” which is absolutely ridiculous.
It is so easy to get caught up in all of this. I also struggled for such a long time with my appearance and it wasn’t until the last couple years that I have been able to appreciate the way I look. It is so hard to keep up with all of this when social media is still a thing. It really is detrimental to young girls and even older women too. At the age girls get into social media is a very sensitive time and can really shape how they think of themselves for many years in the future.
Yes to all of it. I remember when I was a pre-teen doing the same thing as you, looking up the normal weight for my age. But what does normal mean? Healthy? Attractive? Someone who is not even a teenager yet should not be worried about any of those things.
Remember thigh gaps? I remember when that was all anyone could talk about. I knew someone who was like a size 0 or 2 and was complaining about not having one when it very heavily relies on bone structure. And most of the models we see with thigh gaps are photoshopped in post.
When I think of photoshop it reminds me of a YouTube video where guys recreate pictures/ads of women and then get photoshopped with female body standards that I think is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zw634ZZiek