End Body Shaming: A rant

This was supposed to be a post on empowered eating.  But, because I suck at Google, it quickly turned into something else; I’ll save that post for another day.  For right now, this is much more important. 

I just ended up on a pro-ana forum by way of an ill-fated Google search.  I only lasted about 30 seconds on the page and I was so incredibly saddened (and yes—creeped out!) by what I saw that it shook me to the core. The particular forum post I landed on was a thread about how many times per day these girls purge.  I was horrified reading through the various responses; they varied from “once per day” to “after every meal.” I finally had to click the red x at the top of the page when I got to a photo that was in one girl’s signature line.  It was some sort of a stock photo of a girl with her head in the toilet. It had two lines of text “What are you doing?” followed by “Being perfect.”

I just…I probably shouldn't even be writing this post yet because I haven’t wrapped my head around it enough to concisely to my thoughts into words. I’m just so saddened by the fact that there are women (and men, I’m sure) out there that think this is how you achieve perfection. No, scratch that—they think perfection is attainable in the first place. It’s NOT. It’s an illusion. Everything we see on TV and in magazines that we perceive is the human body in perfect form is an airbrushed illusion.  And yet people are putting their bodies through hell, via starvation or purging, to try to attain this so-called perfection.

I’m so sad. I’m so ANGRY that this is what our society has come to.  I know that eating disorders have always existed.  Body image issues and the perfect form have always been a “thing;” just look at how Victorian women used to cram themselves into corsets to obtain that perfect hourglass figure.  But now it’s so much of a thing that it’s SUPPORTED and ENCOURAGED in select groups.  And as a society, we do nothing to prevent it!  Clothing designers produce clothing in impossibly tiny sizes Read: J Crew comes out with a size 000 and people lose weight to fit into them!  We become obsessed with thigh gaps and arm gaps and gaps anywhere we can get gaps.  We show and teach our young girls that THIS is what you should aim for. You should aim for the impossibly tiny waist, limbs that never touch other limbs.  And if you don’t/can’t achieve that, you’re not beautiful. And so we have the pro-ana forums.

I’m equally bothered by the meme based photos that float around saying things like “real women have curves” and “only dogs like sticks” and other such nonsense. STOP. Stop idealizing what a “real woman” should look like.  Everyone is different.  Everyone has a different genetic makeup, a different bone structure, and is at a different place in their journey.  All we should focus on is being happy and healthy and loving ourselves in the now.  Do you need to improve your body?  Fine. But do so in a healthy, safe way.  Let’s all come together to end body shaming and to start practicing self-love and self-acceptance.