Is your waistline a trend? Do your curves fit the craze? Body image issues have become a nationwide epidemic with females and men alike striving to be skinnier, fitter or thicker. There is nothing wrong with pursuing personal body goals, but when we begin to put our personal preference on others, it becomes a problem. To be comfortable in your own skin is to be comfortable with your lifestyle. Humans should have the right to wake up, look in the mirror and feel beautiful.
When we have 12-year-old girls going on diets because they are scared to be fat, it becomes more than about why. These girls don't even know what fat is. Yet, they couldn't imagine anything worse. Who is to blame? Is it the media for construing certain beauty standards in a culture-rich country where beautiful has several definitions? Or does blame get placed on parents for not telling their kids that they don't need to be perfect and in someone else's eyes? Whether we'd like to admit it or not, the answer to "who to blame" is simple. Blame everyone.
From the advertising agencies that think they know how to appeal to the people being appealed to, there is not a single place the blame should not fall. Think about it — would a person feel they are "fat" if they were never told so? Would a small boy ever feel self-conscious of his size if others didn't point out his ribcage every time his shirt came off? We, as human beings, know what we prefer. We know that we like curves here or long legs there. So we label the things we like and they become trends.
It's not all negative; rarely is that the goal of these unrepresentative aesthetics. But when they are televised, sang about and put in magazines, people do what they want with the information they've received. Some embrace it and some realize it as it is, just a song/commercial/article.
Others, however, take what they hear to heart and let it sway the way they view society. Sadly, the latter group of people seem to be the largest one, and for some odd reason, they also control the flow of media imaging.
Still not moved? Here are some facts, courtesy of The National Eating Disorder Associations website:
1. In the United States, 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life.
2. By age six, girls especially start to express concerns about their own weight or shape. Forty to 60% of elementary school girls (ages 6-12) are concerned about their weight or about becoming too fat.
3. Many cases are likely not to be reported and many individuals struggle with body dissatisfaction, the best-known contributor to the development of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.
Get it now? Anyone can sit behind a computer screen and act as a social justice warrior, fighting troll accounts on Twitter and re-tweeting pictures of male comedians protecting a female actor from being body-shamed. But it starts deeper than that. It starts with you and me. It starts with not teasing a girl for a size or a boy for his height. It takes not pointing out that a friend doesn't shave because maybe she is comfortable in her own skin. Assuredly, in this world, if it's pointed out she will no longer have that confidence.
Body shaming isn't just about weight. It's about picking apart people's features and bringing them into the spotlight in a negative fashion. So, we, as a nation, need to stop breaking down others. Look at a human as an entire individual with thoughts, wants and needs like yours and quit defining them by one aspect of their outward appearance. Everyone knows that being judged by your appearance is the worst feeling, so why continue the trend in others? Build each other up. It's the only way we'll survive.
