I’m sorry you think you need to be skinny

The media nowadays is such a hypocrite. It’s showing as all these advertisements with stick-thin models but at the same time it tells us to be unique and embrace our body just the way it is. I wrote a research paper on society and the media’s relationship with eating disorders and body image. I read this in one of the articles I used for my research paper: Enjoy your magazine without negative media messages about your body. If you want, send them back to the advertiser with a message: "Here, I don't want them."

I think that’s a pretty cool idea. I bought an InStyle magazine a few months ago, the one with Leighton Meester on the cover. In the style pages there were these backstage pictures of models in designer clothes and one model in particular was so outrageously skinny, it blew my mind. I recall my jaw dropping. She looked disgusting.

I feel bad for all these girls on Xanga using thinspo and recording their every meal, if you can even call them that.

But okay! I confess. Sometimes I look at these pictures of skinny girls and think I’d like to look like that. But to an extent! I don’t want a huge gap between my thighs, I don’t want to be able to count my ribs, I don’t want my thighs to be thinner than my calves, I don’t want my stomach to be so far in that my ribcage sticks out. There’s a point where skinny is too skinny.

I’d like to be fit. I work out but only about two or three times a week. I also walk five days a weeks; my college is kind of far from my house even if I do take a bus on some days. And I have to climb about eight flights of stairs at school to get to my class. This semester all four of my classes are on the fourth of fifth floor. At malls and other places I usually take the stairs instead of elevator or escalator. So I do whatever I can to keep my body moving. I like it that way.

I think it’s not right to have to make yourself throw up after every meal. Doesn’t it hurt? Even if you want to stop later, you can’t because your body will on instinct make you throw up whether you want to or not. Plus with all the emotional and psychological problems that come with eating disorders, it usually is hell. Anorexia nervosa is the most difficult eating disorder to recover from. I don’t know why people would want to put themselves through all that torture. There’s also the other side of things where I can say “You know what? It’s your life and you’re entitled to do whatever you want. Who am I to judge you?” And someone may say I don’t understand because I’ve never been through it. That’s true, I never have. But we all live in the same world. I see the same ads you do but I chose not to let them affect the way I view my body. I’m not fat but I’m not skinny either. If someone tells me that I’m lucky to have a body I don’t hate and that I should shut up because I don’t understand where anorexics are coming from then here’s my response: You’re right. I’ll never know but here’s something else. What girl doesn’t have body issues? I certainly do.

And if you feel pressured to look a certain way because of other people than maybe you shouldn’t be around them. I’ve never been friends with anyone who has pressured me to look a certain way. I hope you realize that if your friends won’t accept you unless you look a certain why than they’re not really your friends. Screw your boyfriend, screw your friends. Why are you living for them instead of for yourself? If you’re constantly unhappy and depressed because of society’s pressures then it’s completely up to you to change that. I wish girls would understand that there are better and healthier ways to get the body they desire. Don’t go down the anorexia road, it won’t be a pleasant journey.