"Mommy I can't drink orange juice anymore! I can't eat mac and cheese. They'll make me fat!" My then 9 year old daughter said to me after school. My face felt like it could have hit the floor. There was my daughter who has been healthy and lean telling me that eating was going to make her fat. I knew I had to nip this in the bud as soon as possible. So we watched nutritional videos for her age on YouTube explaining what a healthy diet was. I even bought a used American Girl book about nutrition. We moved past these lies together, and she became comfortable with eating those things again. All of this made me start thinking, when do women and girls start having a poor self-image of themselves. I know when it started for me. Mine started in my childhood.
As girls we should be playing with dolls or playing outside. We should have minds that are free from "the perfect way too look". Yet somehow, it finds us. I remember when it started for me. Yes my brother was a brother and told me I was fat often. I was a chunky kid growing up. But all that isn't really what started it. If I was going to be honest, it had to start with the ads. Maybe that sounds silly. Is it really though? When I was in 5th grade I started to notice things more. I had seen the glamorous women on the walls of makeup counters,but it was the dress catalogs for girls that made an impression on me the most. There weren't chunky girls wearing dresses. There were only perfect girls with curls in their hair wearing the pretty dresses. I was still a tomboy at that stage, and thought it was odd. Being a tomboy I didn't mind so much. What I did think though was maybe I wasn't a perfect looking girl. The older I got the more I started noticing I didn't have the "ideal" body type. By the time I was a teen, I became miserable. I was ugly. I was fat. I needed to be on a diet. The way I went about it was destructive.
I had full blown Anorexia Nervosa at 15 and 16. I thought I was fat at a size 0. My hair started falling out. I recovered from it finally with the help of God and prayer. Maybe that's not the popular thing to tell you, but it is what happened. So why am I telling you this? The simple reason is this. Women and girls are told lies. We are told lies so we will buy things like wrinkle cream or diet pills. Look at the makeup industry for example. I'm not saying makeup is bad at all. The question is are there average women advertising this product? No. So somehow deep down whether we admit it, we think this lipstick will make me look like a supermodel. In reality though, you look like yourself with lipstick on. No amount of waxing, tanning, blowouts, or etc is going to truly change you. Underneath you are you. Guess what? You are also beautiful in your own skin. I am in no way against looking nice at all. What I detest though are the lies that ads tell us often, that we are flawed. It simply is not true. Every single woman and girl is beautiful naturally in their various ways. Like looking at a diamond. Sometimes its nice to polish a diamond. The fact remains though its a diamond and can still look beautiful in various directions.
My last words to you ladies are these: Don't let anyone or thing make you feel like nothing. You are worth everything. Every part of you is unique and beautiful.