Growing up in a world with increased and almost at times excessive media access, I found myself looking at lots of material shaped around beauty and health. I was also surrounded by my mom. The woman whom I believed was the most beautiful woman alive. But hearing her constantly say she was fat and ugly did nothing but negatively impact and shape my body image and love for myself. I could never blame my mother for this though, she too also grew up in a time of horribly restrictive body standards on women. Every woman who has ever lived has. Women’s bodies going in and out of “style” happens far too often and is not the fault of women, it is the fault of a society that perpetuates and encourages these restrictive and impossible body standards.
Forever we as a society have been hearing that obesity is an increasing threat to our nation, which in some aspects can be very well true, but not to the fear-mongering extent that we have believed for so long. It is so incredibly common for a person to be perceived outwardly as “unhealthy” or “fat” to be far from those things. “When the culture and the medical world are constantly pushing the idea that “obesity” needs to be eliminated, it’s not the fat cells that are feeling that stigma—it’s the fat people” (Bacon, Linda, Severson, Amee). I think this quote from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/fat-is-not-the-problem-fat-stigma-is/#
Is a very good representation of the point being made in the beginning of this writing. Not only is it the media that perpetuates these outdated and outlandish ideas, but so do the medical professionals of the world. The people that are supposed to be helping us and ensuring the best for our health. Instead of doing that they are pushing standards that society believes to be beautiful and acceptable.
The concept of obesity as a whole is one that is based on something called Body Mass Index (BMI) which has been proven time and again how inaccurate it is to determine a person’s health off of. This scale is outdated and based on practically “perfection.” There is no room for any sort of diversity in bodie’s within this system of measurement and only further harms a huge portion of the population. The BMI scale is incredibly harmful to a lot of people of all shapes and sizes. I remember getting my height and weight taken as early as kindergarten and being told I was overweight; that if I did not lose weight I could develop “serious health problems.” I was 5. Literally 5 years old, being told by the people who were supposed to be helping me that I was overweight and needed to lose weight. I am certainly not the only person who has experienced something like this, and I even believe I am privileged in this aspect considering I was not overweight in the slightest. People who weighed more than me pretty much had no chance at developing love for the body they are in.
I think a really big turning point in my view on my body was when I developed my eating disorder. I have struggled with anorexia and bulimia since about the seventh grade, and it was not until I began to noticeably lose weight that people noticed. But because I am not the way society typically thinks of people with eating disorders, I was complimented on my weight loss and told things like I was “glowing” or “looking the best I have ever looked.” Not only were these incredibly harmful for me to hear, but just reaffirmed by belief that fitting into society's standards would get people to notice and like me more. At one point in my life I had gone almost two weeks without eating, and lost over 25 pounds in less than 2 months. I was at my absolute worst, yet I was finally receiving the love and validation I so desperately craved.
Commenting on people’s appearances is a practice that needs to be stopped at ANY capacity. It is not anyone else's place to say something or judge the way another person is based solely off of appearance. This practice is something that is ingrained into us as human beings from the time we are able to comprehend words. It is not our fault that we are made to think this way as individuals, but it starts to become our fault when we do nothing to fix the problem.
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