Nearly 70% of girls ages 8-14 have been on extreme diets, and nearly 35% of them end up developing a eating disorder.
These statistics really struck me.
We all know someone who is always dieting, complaining that they are fat, watching what they eat, or obsessed with exercise.
I have to admit... I do it. I do it quite often in fact. I obsess over maintaining my image, my body...
Reading about the dangers and risks that come with this crazy obsession to be skinny-really made me take a moment and reflect on how I and many other people I know, have used weight or "jean size" to defy how good we feel about ourselves.
When I was a child... Skinny would defiantly not have been the word to describe me. I liked my pizza, brownies, and pasta WAY too much.
"Popular" or "beautiful" would not be the words either. I defiantly was not either of those things. I got teased a lot about my weight... and always felt extremely self conscious about it.
Then the wonderful age of 13 came and I hit a huge growth spurt. For the first time in my life I was fitting into size 0 or 1 jeans.
All the sudden I had a ton of friends, a boy friend, and was popular.
Needless to say, it felt wonderful.
As I grew older my weight continued to fluctuate more or less. There was a time in high school when I once again put on a few pounds.... Once again I felt the wrath of social pressure upon me.
People would say terrible things about me, and sooner or later they got back to me. It was like a stab to the heart each time.
After years and years of struggling with an up and down cycle of gaining, loosing, obsessing... My body finally has reached a good place.
I am not stick skinny, nor am I overweight. But, most importantly I am not worried or self conscious about myself 24/7.
Today I sit here thinking about how it felt in the past. How it felt to hear people say those things about me. How it felt that how much I weigh or how I looked, was the reason I gained friendships, a boyfriend, and status. How it felt to look at myself and not be able to point out one positive thing I liked about me.
This is NOT ok.
No little girl should ever have to feel that she is not good enough because of how her body looks.
It is not fair that the qualities that people consider "popular" or "beautiful" are not representative of more then half of the population of women in the world.
It is WRONG and sick that I felt those things about myself. And even more saddening is the fact that when I lost weight... People treated me better.
I was not a different person. I just LOOKED better.
Reading about how some girls take this pressure to look a certain way to the point of killing themselves really makes my heart ache.
Being who I am now. I wish I could go back to myself back then and tell myself to stop worrying so much about what everyone else perceives me as, and start working on how I see myself.
Because at the end of the day, I am in a much better place then probably 80% of the people who made me feel inadequate.
This topic is so real, and it breaks me into pieces knowing that there are hundreds of little girls out there feeling this way. Striving to be someone and something that they are not, getting teased, dieting, dying.
Doesn't that make you sick?
Sometimes I wonder... How would people that are so caught up in looking perfect and looking down on those who dont, feel if THEY had a child who was starving herself or himself in order to make everyone else around them love them? Would they be ok with that? Is it worth the status or the label of being beautiful?
No.
So please, I beg you to take a stand with ME and try our hardest to end this.
I dont want to obsess over my weight.
I want to love me just how I am.
I want my own definition of "beauty"
I want to eat that damn burrito.
I dont want to keep track of each meal I have... Or feel guilty after every bite.
I want peace with my body.
But most of all...
I want to show younger girls who feel like I used to feel...
That they are BEAUTIFUL and that one day they will look back on the people who made them feel bad about themselves and only feel pity for them.
No one should have to loose their life in order to feel like they are accepted.
I hope that I can keep this promise to myself and stop obsessing about my body, and accept myself as beautiful, at any size.
Because in the end.
Outer beauty ALWAYS fades, but inner beauty shines till in end.
xoxo
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ReplyDeleteI totally agree. Let's preach health more than thin. I think if more people took a serious look at what they're eating, and HOW they're eating, diets wouldn't be necessary. It's so much easier to just eat healthy foods consistently than to diet like crazy. I just wish more people could realize that...
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