By Nicole Zinerco
When was the last time you heard a friend say that? Maybe you were shopping. Or maybe you were going out. Or maybe you were just walking to class. It has become perfectly acceptable for women to criticize their own bodies every day. Why is that?
So here are the facts. Statistics show that 81% of ten year olds are afraid of becoming “fat”. In high school, 90% of girls think they are overweight. More women battle eating disorders than Breast Cancer. And 51% of women would rather be hit by a truck, yes, hit by a truck, than be “fat”.
Scary, huh? Why are so many women uncomfortable with their body image? Where does this need to be thin come from? We are certainly not born with it. Women are constantly bombarded with images of super-skinny celebrities and un-realistic beauty in advertisements. What happened to sexy women? Real women, with real curves like Bettie Paige and Marilyn Monroe?
Sure there’s Scarlett Johansson and Beyonce, who are undoubtedly beautiful, but they are exceptions to this skinny rule. When are real women going to be the norm?
I’m not saying women should be perusing heavier bodies. Health should be our priority.
Weight bearing exercise as young women is important to create strong bones when we get older. Women like Evangeline Lily, or popularly known as Kate from the ABC series Lost, with toned bodies are great models for a fit and healthy female body. But sometimes women who are toned also pick up the connotation of “fat” because they are bigger than other women. Why is being slender the priority over our health? Where is it that we go wrong?
Let’s start from the beginning. As girls we watch our mother’s worry about their weight. We watch them diet and skip meals to lose those last ten pounds for their cousins’ weddings. We watch them over-eat when they’re stressed. And so we grow up with these food issues. We think that if our tummy was a little flatter that that boy will finally ask us out, or that life would be easier if we were just five pounds lighter. So we diet, as young girls. Food
becomes the enemy. This gets passed on through generations.
And if its not food issues that distort our body image as we grow, it’s the unrealistic standards of the media. We turn on the television and see celebrities like Paris Hilton, real life Barbie Dolls, who show us girls that we must be tall and thin to be beautiful. We flip open a fashion magazine and see models who are thinner than 98% of women. And in advertising, women are objectified to sell everything from food to cars. The use of Photoshop has totally revolutionized the industry. Now with the ability to create perfect skin and long eyelashes in photos, normal women can be retouched into “perfect women”.
And so we learn to be obsessed with body image.
Last week I read an article online about a Fitness First advertisement in the Netherlands to encourage people to lose weight. This bus-stop advertisement is a bench with a secret scale, so when an innocent person sits down, their weight flashes up in red for all the world to see. This is a cruel way for the media to make women body conscious. What if someone recovering from an eating disorder was to sit on this bench? This kind of advertising has to be stopped. We as a society, need to stop worrying about “being fat”.
But changes are happening. This March, Canadian designer Cheri Milaney presented her Fall/Winter 2009 Collection at LG Toronto Fashion Week. She chose real women from ages 20 to 68, sizes 4 to 16, and of all backgrounds to model in her show. She was the first designer in any fashion week in the world to do so. And look at Dove commercials who show real women, the women who the advertisement is reaching out to.
Yes, change is coming, but it’s a slow process.
So what’s the solution? My point is that change can start with us. I think its time women start to “feel healthy” rather than worring about “losing weight”. A healthy body looks different for everyone. Next time you hear a friend say they look “fat”, tell them how beautiful they are. Let’s end all the criticism and start to feel good about our bodies. We, as women, need to stand together and tell the world “This is my body, and I’m proud of it!”.
Works Cited:
(2008). The struggle with the “Thin Ideal”. Retrieved 4/2/2009, from http://www.bodyimageprogram.org/issue/
(Image from http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs8/i/2005/285/1/8/Do_I_Look_Fat__by_MissShyly.jpg)
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