Social media has become a prevalent part of today's society. Children are making their way onto the various sites at earlier and earlier ages every year. They want to fit in with their friends who are talking about the pictures they recently posted to Instagram or something they have recently retweeted on Twitter. With the recent spike in social media has come the spike in body shaming. There is an alarming 80 percent of women who are unhappy with the way they look and around 70 percent of people who fall into the normal body weight category wish they could be thinner than they currently are. Social media sites, magazine covers, and television commercials are creating unattainable body standards for many people across the world. Every person has a different build but on these various media sources it seems to have one type of person shown: the person who is skinny and muscular.
I know I can speak for a bunch of people, women in particular, in saying that there have been points in my life where I was unhappy with various parts of body from my weight to my thunder thighs. I have worked out hard, spent more time than is healthy in the gym with the aim to become skinner rather than to be healthy. It has taken time to come to the realization that everyone is built in a different way and that it is OK. As long as you eat healthy and workout then however you look is beautiful. The pieces of your body that you have shamed for all these years should be marveled at rather than criticized for not looking like someone else's.
The social media sites have a way of hiding what the person has done to get to be the way that they are, as many celebrities have personal trainers and personal chefs to ensure they are able to maintain a certain weight. They also do not show whether the individuals are truly happy or not and if they have battled serious disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. There are celebrities that have been idolized for years who admit to having disorders they have battled due to the constant attention on the way they look. It is not only actors or actresses that have done this though, even some athletes have. Shawn Johnson, a world class gymnast, reduced her calories to dangerously low numbers in order to stay a small size in her gymnastics years. She would reduce her caloric intake to somewhere between 700 and 800 calories a day, which is scary low for the hours that she would spend training in the gym. The media was constantly chiming in on the way she looked so she would go to extreme measures in order to play into the mania that is known as the current day media. It is such a shame that a world class athlete would feel the need to worry about the way she looks rather than training to the best of her ability (which she did seeing as she has an Olympic gold medal to show for it).
Body shaming is something that needs to be stopped. Everyone is built differently and the different body shapes should be marveled at rather than ridiculed. People should not be picked apart by the individual parts of their body, instead the person should be idolized for their uniqueness. Many stores and advertisements enhance the already beautiful models that they have to make them look what they consider to be perfect, which is playing into the unattainable standards for people to shoot for. A company that has taken a stand against enhancements of their models is Aerie with their Aerie Real line, and they should be applauded for taking a different path than many of their competitors. Everyone's uniqueness is what makes the world what it is today. As long as you are happy with how you are then the media and the ridiculous standards brought on by it are worthless. Take a stand and stop allowing the influence of the media impact the way you feel about your body because everyone was created the way they are for a reason. Everyone is perfect in their own way.
