Tuesday 19 March 2013

The Internet is Bad For My Body Image

Wow, I have not written in ages! I have been meaning to write this for a while, so I may as well write it today!

An issue that is always being brought to my attention, in the media, on Facebook and in real life, and something that I have addressed previously, is that of body image. There are a lot of images circling the Web regarding body size, commenting on what is attractive. Usually, there is a photo of a super skinny woman, next to a photo of a curvy woman (often Marilyn Monroe), with some comment about how the thin woman is unattractive and the curvy woman is attractive, this image is the one I am thinking of:


Firstly, they have not only chosen an unflattering photo of Marilyn to use, the one which makes her look bigger than she is, but they have also chosen the most extreme example they could find to basically say 'curves are better than bones' or whatever. Now, of course I agree that yes, super skinny is bad, if you have inflicted it upon yourself or have an eating disorder (although instead of judging these mentally ill people, we should be helping them love themselves, not loathe themselves even more which is often why they have an eating disorder in the first place: trust me, I know). 

Secondly, your weight should NOT in any way determine how attractive you are. I loathe all the Facebook groups that say looking a certain way is better than looking some other way, particularly as people are then all confused as to why so many people have body issues or low self-esteem. We place so much emphasis on looks, bringing your weight into it makes it worse. What makes you attractive is not your appearance, but your personality (cliche I know). What is wrong with thin women? Why are they so unattractive all of a sudden? I am not a large woman, I have curves but in the grand scheme of things, I am thin, and people often call me skinny even though I don't believe I am. I don't look good chubbier than I am, so I don't want to gain weight in order to measure my worth, especially as years ago I developed an eating disorder after being called 'fat' for my entire childhood (I was never above a healthy weight for my height). My body is naturally 'chunky', regardless of how little I weigh. 

Similarly, these two images often appear on my Facebook timeline, or Tumblr dashboard:


Again the intention of these is clear, it is to dictate to people what they should find attractive. I see Kiera Knightly and Kirsten Dunst on the 'unattractive' image list. They are both naturally very slim and always have been, they cannot help it, so we should not make them both out to be unattractive because of this. I don't doubt that the models on the bottom are attractive, but they are all still very slim women, not that much bigger than the 'skinny' women, so it seems like the point is a bit invalid. Equally, the second image is usually accompanied by figures telling us what clothing size these women are and that men will prefer the bigger woman, thus insinuating that women must be bigger to get male attention. All three of those women are attractive, yet people comment on the thinner ones saying how they are 'too thin'. No one in that photo looks too thin to me, they all look healthy weights of different sizes. Why do we feel the constant need to compare these body shapes and comment on them all the time? It's belittling and mean. The people who make these comments would hate it if their photo was on the internet being judged in the same way, so it should not be ok for them to effectively bully and stereotype people of different body shapes.