At my summer job I am surrounded by a lot of girls. They work with me or come in as customers- they are everywhere. and they teach me things. They have continued to prove to me how society distorts their views of themselves. This big concern came out one day when I was doing what I often do, people-watching through the window. As colorful arrays of locals and tourists shuffled by, two girls I was working with, both weighing less than average, started comparing themselves and moaning about their supposedly disgusting bodies.
Now alright, I am not the role model of self-confidence or anything, but I am content with how I am. Sometimes even happy (gasp!). I don’t consider myself overweight or underweight, but pretty normal in size. The girls complaining, first of all, are all half my size. Okay maybe not half, maybe three quarters of my size. And somehow all of them (the original two girls turned into about five) seemed to be suffering from some sort of mental disease that made them hate themselves. Some confided that they hated being naked, and all could agree that baring it all is an event often filled with self-doubt and insecurity. As we watched people go by the conversation ignored the “normal” girls and focused entirely on the ones that resembled Cosmopolitan magazine-cover bodies. Every girl surrounding me was open to the idea of breast surgery (most to become bigger) and some were even discussing liposuction. Not one of these girls is an inch bigger than me, so am I supposed to want lipo too? I tried to tell them that they are ridiculous, but they kept talking as if they were horrendous.
One girl (who said she doesn’t mind sharing this) is actually a model. Blonde hair, blue eyes, the poster-child for the all-American beauty queen, and she worries about being fat. She says she could lose ten pounds but in my opinion she could gain them instead. If she lost them she would break. Seriously. But she says “I wish I could eat without regretting it.” Regretting nourishing yourself? While two others discuss how one hates her stomach and the other hates her thighs, I wonder what the heck is going on. These girls are all beautiful and so many women would kill to have young, able and totally fit bodies. But as this little study shows, even the prettiest and thinnest women are conditioned to feel like they’ll never be good enough. Even if they know they are being tipped for their pretty smiles. Even if they are literally models and are paid to look good. Even if girls all over who really are struggling with weight problems are killing themselves to look like these girls who are complaining. Even that isn’t enough proof to them that they are more than okay.
This topic of weight comes up so often at work that the girls by now know that I’m going to keep eating my chicken alfredo and keep telling them they are crazy. Usually I feel like it’s totally useless and they are going to believe what they are taught to believe (that they aren’t hot enough), but there was one little moment that gave me hope. One of the girls came to me and said that the day before she realized that she hated what she had become. She was with her friends and refused to take her shorts off for fear of them judging her as “fat.” She had become “one of those girls.”While I’m sad that she worried so much about her thighs that she didn’t even relax with her friends, I’m happy that she at least recognized her choice of action as a little ridiculous.
So what did I learn this summer? The media’s standards are killing girls more than ever. Okay, I know statistics for male eating disorders are rising and pressure is put on men too, but I’m still dumbfounded by the situation of women feeling so inadequate. Last night I watched a date between a man and a women happening, and as the man happily cleaned his plate, the fragile-looking women ordered a wrap (no fries, which usually come on the side) and picked it apart until it was such a mess that perhaps no one could tell that she hadn’t eaten any of it. I was bored. I was watching. She hadn’t.
Pop culture seriously needs to back off, because even its 120lb offspring are concerned about eating-anything. How are we going to enjoy life if all we think about is how we look in a bikini? We’re not. What we’re going to do is support Victoria’s Secret and loathe our thighs every time we think of cheesecake. Now where’s the fun in that? I know not every woman is concerned, but for the most part I just want to scream… Eat up girls, you are fine! And don’t let any lingerie ad or starving girl in a bikini tell you otherwise!