Body Image is something that has been around since people
could see. Negative or positive, people have been focused on how people will
see them since the beginning of time. Growing up no one realized it, but we
judged each other on how we looked at least five times per day. While there are
positive critiques, it is always the negative that end up getting to a person.
The negative comments seem to always be that ones that creep into your mind and
make a home in there. They seem to be the comments that you remember on a good
day at the most random and worst time to remember them. They seem to be the one
to drive a person so far down they become depressed.
Girls self-esteem starts at the bright young age of nine
years old. At nine years old I was already told unspeakable things from my own
family and friends that put me into a depression. One artist who has inspired
me and this project was Demi Lovato. Growing up she faced many of the same
things that I went through as far as bullying and mental illness. She was
bullied in school for being a bit chunkier than other girls her age, for me it
was sort of the opposite. I was always too skinny and my chin was always the
focal point of comments no matter where I went.
Despite woman like
Lovato striving to be skinner, up until the 20th century it was considerably
ideally beautiful to be a curvy or chunkier woman in America. Through paintings
from artists like Peter Paul Ruben, they perfectly captured the plump and full
figured women. It was not until the 1890s-1910s and development of the corset
that the idea of a skinnier woman became the new view of beauty in America. Not
a skinny woman, but skinner than those in the paintings back in the 17th
century. After that it began a slow hill from a society of people who
appreciated the art of the woman's to a society that saw us women as sex
objects and just a body. Around the 1950s, curves started to make a comeback
when Marylin Monroe became the icon for woman in America. It did not live long
though because during the 1960s the "twiggy" figured women blasted
curvy women out of the water's to this beginning the new beauty icon for the
next few decades.
Lovato fell into a deep depression from the negativity
surrounding her body that she eventually starting cutting her wrists out of the
pain she was feeling. Her self-esteem was killed off at a young age. When she was
only four years old she was already saying that she wanted to be skinnier. She
felt as though everywhere she went that people were starring at her and her
weight. Onto of cutting herself, this negativity led her to have suicidal
thoughts at the age of seven. Also with struggling to become skinner, Lovato
developed an eating disorder that last for years.
13 percent of girls ages 15-17 acknowledge that they have
some kind of an eating disorder. Girls are feeling so desperate to look like
the woman we see on TV that we are naming "People's Magazine's Most
Sexiest Woman On Earth" and fail to see that there is not a single sexiest
woman on earth, but that we all are sexy and beautiful in our own ways. By
failing to see this they become more depressed and fall into developing an
eating disorder that can physically harm them. Striving for that same
appearance for herself, Lovato developed anorexia first then later on developed
bulimia.
After receiving help at a rehabilitation center, Lovato
began a journey of not only continuing to learn how to love herself for the
first time, but to help other girls feel empowered to do the same. Recently she
did a photo shoot nude in order to promote body positivity and refused to wear
makeup and refused to have her photos retouched before being posted. Why did
she do this? So she can show women that they can get to a place where they feel
confident, and can leave all of their body issues behind. Where they are not
ashamed of their own skin. She even started the #NoMakeUpMonday trend on
Instagram in order to encourage natural beauty.
Why do we, as women, see other women in the public eye
that are seen and said to us as beautiful and feel that we are not good enough
and to be beautiful we need to try and look like these celebrities as much as
we can? Words. Words are told to us and while they say "sticks and stones
may break my bones but words will never hurt me" the words in these cases
are the sticks and stones. Emotional scarring through words have a longer and
more effective impact on young girls and woman. I'm 20 years old and I still fight
day to day to not let lies I was told at 12 about my appearance effect me
daily. One thing that does happen when you learn to accept and love yourself,
it becomes easier. The pain and the words begin to lose their power and it
becomes easier.
Now whenever I'm told not to wear form fitting skirts,
you know what I do? I go out to buy a form fitting skirt. I'm told not to wear
a bikini? I go out and buy three different kinds in order to wear them all
summer long. This is where I pose the same challenge to my girls I teach.
Through to Psalm 139:14 Project, I like to teach my girls it is all about empowerment
and action. I tell my girls that when other people say for them not to be who
they are, to wear their hair whoever they would like, to wear certain clothes
that they would like or told they are not beautiful in any way, they ignore it.
They drop it from their minds and listen to what people who know them and love
them say. It is easier said than done, and it is a simple concept, but it is
the most effective. They learn that for every one girl that says something
demeaning to another girl, they will be the one to counter act that statement
with a word of encouragement and empowerment. "For I am fearfully and wonderfully made"
(Psalm 139:14).
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