SELF
why don’t I look like her?
Pressures from society have slammed the positive mindsets of young women and filled them with distortion. “I’d weigh myself five times a day in a rigorous, unfaltering regime. It wasn’t just about weight anymore; it was an all-consuming wave that I couldn’t seek refuge from – even in my dreams.” Georgina Walters has anorexia. It began when she was as young as 13, she felt she was the epitome of failure and a lack of control. “I would sit with my head down, tears flowing from my cheeks with a raw throat – exhausted from purging and exhausted from being me.” You would have no idea of her deep dark issue, she was an introvert, socially awkward, and she would mumble. She was the shy girl next door on the outside but on the inside self loathing had taken over her body entirely.
Her mind filled with disturbing thoughts, as she became weaker, it became stronger. “My stomach had finally shrunk to the size of my ego.” The anorexia took a turn in spiralling into anxiety and depression at the age of 16: a mother’s worst nightmare for their child. “I had no intention of getting better. I was stuck in a limbo of pros and cons of living, eating and going outside.” This is the mindset that could have lead to death if nothing changed. Her school friends had moved on to higher education whilst Georgina remained at home, unable to cope with everyday life. “I felt pathetic and worthless as I failed to function in a society that had moved on without me.”
“It was an all-consuming wave that I couldn’t seek refuge from - even in my dreams.”
Any form of media, especially Instagram would make Georgina question her appearance. “The images I saw made me angry and resentful of my body. I know there was a biological influence on my disorder but the intense exposure of the ‘ideal’ female body made it impossible for me not to want to lose weight.” Victoria’s Secret ran a ‘perfect body’ campaign which caused uproar as it only featured slim built models, sending a controversial message that this is how we should look. Blog post, Dear Kate, responded with a campaign featuring the same title, but using women of different body types. “Through this, we showcase women who are often neglected by the media and traditional retailers. We show the multitude of shapes perfect bodies can take.” A petition was created for Victoria’s Secret to change the slogan of the campaign and apologize, reaching over 27,000 signatures, they changed the slogan to ‘a body for everybody’, although never apologised.
ibly shocking, rising progressively each year. Where has our self esteem gone? Self acceptance? Self identity? Women have become so self absorbed that nothing else seems to matter, believing everything they see. In reality, what we see is not real, it is manipulated. According to the National Eating Disorders Association 69% of girls in grades 5 to 12 reported that magazine pictures influenced their idea of a perfect body shape whilst 47% reported they wanted to lose weight because of images of models they had seen.
In 1984, fashion magazine Glamour carried out a survey in which it was found that around 40% of women felt unhappy with their body image. In 2009, a similar survey to Glamour readers was conducted with many of the same questions as before, where it was found that 54% of women ages 18 to 40 were unhappy with their bodies. Glamour’s editor-in-chief, Cindi Leive, told the Today Show: “I won’t sugar coat it: these were some difficult survey results.” She added that “the increase in women’s body Like Georgina, over 1.6 billion people dissatisfaction is startling and not suffer from anorexia in the UK alone. great news.” These statistics have grown incred-
It was thought that some change would be expected, but not that much. Satoshi Kanazawa, Ph.D., an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science stated “no significant evolutionary changes can happen in just a couple of generations.” The primary cause? Social media. In another survey by Glamour related to social media, it was found that the women spend an average of nearly four and a half hours a day online, and two hours on social media. The more time spent online, the more self-conscious the women were about their bodies. In Naomi Wolf’s ‘The Beauty Myth’ she writes that anorexia “deserves the kind of media investigation that is devoted to serious and potentially fatal epidemics. This killer epidemic, however has never made the cover of the Time; it is relegated to the style sections.” Conditions such as these are treated through therapy unlike others that require medication, they are not attractive and are usually overlooked as they are often not understood properly. “We as women are trained to see ourselves as cheap imitations of fashion photographs,
rather than see fashion photographs as a cheap imitation of women.” Photo centric social media is at a constant. Snapchat’s new filters recreate a face mask that either adjust, contour or change the face shape, programming them to westernised beauty standards.
After a while we become used to what we see through these filters and begin using Snapchat to take our regular selfies, however the camera lens is lying. There is an obsession with social media image and with the idea of having to look perfect. Ever noticed how the women who travel the world and get paid to post Instagrams all have the same ‘idealised’ body type? Instagram campaign @effyourbeautystandards, founded by plus size model Tess Holliday, interprets the opposite to what we expect, it’s a movement set out to inspire new beauty standards instead of the usual unrealistic body goals. The aim is to “spread the message of defin-
ing your own body on your own terms as far and as wide as I could.” But isn’t this just promoting a different ‘plus size’ body type and shaming skinny models? “I feel much older and I feel much wiser because of my experiences.” states Georgina. “I really struggled with the idea that I wasn’t good enough. But you can’t change who you are, but you can change the way you view yourself.” There is an eternal row with skinny models, I’m still shocked that fashion shows carry on featuring the same body shape today, as the controversy continues to shock society. Body positivity needs to be reinforced so that we start accepting ourselves for who we are.
“But you can’t change who you are, but you can change the way you view yourself.”