There is a new trend that girls are following on social media these days. It’s called the A4 Waist Challenge and it’s just as unattainable as the thigh gap and the Kylie Jenner lips.
It started as a fad in China but has been becoming popular online. The goal of this challenge is for a person to be able to hold up a regular 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper portrait orientation to their torso to prove that their waist is smaller than 8.5 inches wide facing forward. That is the only way you “win” this competition.
There is nothing wrong with having a small body frame and low body fat composition. There is nothing wrong with comparing your body to the size of different objects as referent points. What is wrong is when girls idolize and obsess over these as the ideal perfect body type that they need to have. It is simply one extreme of the body spectrum in which a wide frame and intense obesity is the other extreme.
Most people fall in between. Most people have different body shapes. As long as you are taking care of your health and exercise, be content with your body; if you don't, then be aware of the risks and accept the natural consequences.
Why are we so enamored with comparison? Whether it be body type, weight, lifestyle, fashion, makeup, or hair. It doesn’t ever make us happy unless we feel better than someone else, which means that we are putting them down in order to raise ourselves up.
Why do we want to look or be someone else? What is wrong with you that you need to try to be someone else instead of yourself? Are you not smart enough? Pretty enough? Talented enough? What is enough? Who decided what is enough? It should be you.
It seems to me that the rest of society has this topic well covered, but when I stopped by Facebook on an afternoon scroll this short video story disturbed me as one of the first things to pop-up.
I normally don’t find myself engaging in this topic for a couple of reasons (1) it seems frivolous to me and (2) society completely ignores body image issues for men and boys.
I do (of course) struggle with insecurities and comparing myself to others all the time, but for me it isn’t helpful to talk about with people. I know that it may help others deal with it and change their perspective, and I don’t mind talking about it with someone struggling, it just isn’t useful for me.
Body image insecurities are way more prevalent for girls than guys but they still have them too, people just never address it. The biggest issue for most teens is identity and body image, comfortability is a large part of that especially when it isn’t resolved in that stage of life because it bleeds into adulthood as well.
All this to say, we need to be people who stop comparing ourselves to other people that are not us and learn to love who we are and how we look.
