We Need to Get Our Sh*t Together for the Next Generation of Women
Every day I open my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to see women in work out clothes, women sharing diet plans, women and men sharing pictures of perfect women, with perfect bodies, praising them endlessly.
When I scroll through the feeds of each app I find myself questioning my worth, my body, my appearance. I am about to turn 20 and these posts, tweets, and comments affect the way I live. I am constantly comparing myself to pictures I see on Instagram of the perfectly tan women who are my age with no cellulite or fat.
Today I took a step back, I thought of the younger women in my life, the women who have yet to be born, the women nestled in their mother’s womb, how will they be affected by this nonsense?
We are so open about what we like and dislike but why are we not open about the damage we cause ourselves and other women? Why aren’t we realistic about the fact that some of our bodies will never be a size 0 or a size 8, that whether we are fighting to be thin or “thick” our bodies won’t feel at home because those are not the bodies we were given.
I look back at my adolescence with a very heavy heart. I did not have Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, but I had magazines and TV and I was constantly listening to the weight loss stories of women who were beautiful at their original weight, I read the diet plans in my magazines, I knew the dangers of carbs, sugars, and fats. I was a young girl in self-destruct mode with no guidance on how to love the body I was given.
My K-12 experience was not pleasant, I received an endless amount of comments about my body, some were with good intentions, others were just insensitive. I constantly felt like I was walking around with a huge sign that said “JUDGE MY BODY”. As a 8-year-old, I remember my stomach getting slapped and being told to suck it in. To that person, I was nicer to look at with my stomach sucked in rather than it being relaxed as most 8-year-olds stomachs should be.
My stomach wasn’t the only problem, my thighs sparked up conversation quite frequently. I had a boy sit next to me comparing my thighs to his telling me mine were bigger. In middle school, girls spent their time emphasizing how big my butt and thighs were, as if I wasn’t aware. High school hit and I remember walking down the hall wearing a pair of athletic shorts and having two girls laugh at me while they talked about my “HUUUUUGE thighs” saying it loud enough that I could hear.
At the time these comments were made, girls with my body type were not praised, they were taunted, mainly by other girls, but I had a handful of boys make fun of me too. The worst experiences were when I received comments from adults, telling me to stop eating, telling me I had eaten enough, telling me I would look better if I lost a few more pounds, telling me that I was chubby, talking about me amongst each other. I remember overhearing two women compare my “chubby” body to my friends thin body.
I look back at these memories and think ‘WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?!’ I was a young girl and I was tolerating an unacceptable amount of comments about MY body. If it was that bad during my childhood I can only imagine how bad it is for girls now.
As adults we become so self-involved that we forget about those around us, the little eyes and ears that watch our every move and listen to our every word. Why can’t we be decent human beings for those younger than us? Why can’t we get our shit together and learn how to love and accept ourselves?
I refuse to let the young women in my life to feel the way I felt as a young girl or even now, I refuse to let body image consume their life, I refuse to be ignorant to the crappy body images and diet regimens we expose to these young women.
No girl should go to sleep wishing for another body or another life in which they are thin, thick, or anything but themselves. Our girls and women need to be going to sleep thanking themselves for keeping their body healthy, for showing their body love, for letting their minds live in peace from the darkness that consumes the mind when we let food and body images control our minds.
I have spent 14 years of my life hating my body, living in darkness, crying for a different body, fighting the body God gave me. To this day, I still don’t know what self-love is and that is due to the years of harmful words and lack of positive examples but that does not have to be the life for other girls.
I have decided to get my shit together and to fake self love until I believe it because I am going to be the positive example for the young women in my life, I am going to be their light in the darkness, I am going to be the voice of reason, I am going to be the person that reminds them that they can love and be loved for who they are.
Today I ask that you be the woman you needed when you were a young girl. Be the woman you need for yourself and for those around you. The future generation of women deserve to live happily in their own skin, they deserve the years we dieted away, they deserve the confidence we threw away along with our happiness.
Get your shit together and choose love.
