I’ve been insecure about my weight since I was thirteen or fourteen years old. I even started doing diets at that young age. I thought that I had to be worried about my weight since girls who were even thinner than me thought they were fat.
In my sociology class, we discuss issues like this all the time and how society basically raises us to have these pre-conceived notions about who we should be and how we should look and act. Today we went over the concept of conformity, which I think I was taking part of in middle school when a lot of the other girls in my class were starting to go on diets and complain about their body image. Without realizing it back then, I was going along with a trend, an unhealthy trend, but a trend nonetheless. Working out used to solely be about trying to be skinny for me, which is not good.
At this point in my life, I work out to stay healthy. However, six years after this conformity started in middle school, this habit of criticizing my own image has become a norm for me and for lots of girls my age. It boggles my mind to think that the only reason I don’t feel good enough about my body sometimes is because of this decision that society made that skinny is what’s acceptable. It could just have easily been decided that plus sized women are what’s socially acceptable. Either way, this is telling all other women that who they are isn’t good enough unless they fit this standard.
This doesn’t just have to do with weight though. Women are portrayed as being a certain way based on the clothes they wear, the way they do their makeup, how they talk, etc. If you wear a dress, then it means you’re feminine. If you dress in athletic gear, then it means you’re more masculine. If you wear makeup it means that you care more about your appearance vs. if you don’t wear makeup, then you don’t care about how you look.
These are all stereotypes that we have made up as a society at some point. These are all also stereotypes that aren’t necessarily true. All women are beautiful and they shouldn’t be judged at all based on their appearance. It doesn’t matter if a girl is a size 0 or a size 16, or wears makeup or doesn’t, it’s all irrelevant compared to who they are as a person.
I also have to wonder why there isn’t as much pressure put on guys to fit a certain standard. Sure, maybe there is somewhat of a body image that’s being portrayed as the ideal for men, but it’s not nearly as restricting as it is for women.
So why do women have to be put under such pressure? It’s because of these societal “norms.” If the societal norm wasn’t to be skinny, then there would definitely be another norm put in its place. What if we got rid of these norms all together? Would we all be accepted without having to ever feel insecure? I’m not sure but I like to think we can achieve a society someday that doesn’t project what’s acceptable and what’s not, especially when it comes to weight.
