Pass by a group of girls and you are almost guaranteed ‘weight’ will be a subtopic in their conversation.
Just the other day, I bumped into an old friend who quickly commended me for how skinny I am. Ironically enough, I had actually been working hard to add a few pounds myself a while back. I want to say I am 100% comfortable with my body but that would be a lie. Women are more aware and self conscious of their bodies defects as opposed to their male counterparts. A man with a pot belly will comfortably swing his giant belly while a woman with a relatively good body will have a million things she either wants to enhance and others she desperately wants to shed off.
Hard to believe but super models end up being the ones most affected by their physique as opposed to the everyday woman who can devour a pizza all by herself. The pressure to look a certain way definitely takes a toll on most of us. I have a close circle of friends and we all have that one thing that makes us feel insecure. From broad shoulders to stretch marks, to our fat or our skinny bodies, we always have that one thing we are not completely comfortable
with. Social media does little to remedy this situation. With Photoshop and makeup that can be equated to plastic surgery nowadays, we tend to have superficial expectations about what beauty really is. It is one thing to see a model in the magazines or tabloids looking sleek and polished, it’s another thing to see your neighbor posting flawless selfies when your face is acne filled.
We often don’t acknowledge the fact that anyone can access a million filters to smooth up rough edges whenever they want to and that half of the people who post their pictures online look nothing (in real life), like they appear to on social platforms.
It is difficult to believe that we would take hours to Photoshop ourselves but we do; we are so insecure about our bodies that we go through hours trying to change our appearance because we feel like the natural-plain “us” isn’t good enough for the world. Women go to the extent of buying clothing items that enhance their features, with additional silicon in the hind rear
or huge padded bras that give the illusion of buttocks and breasts larger than life. Waist trainers that tuck in our overflowing bellies giving us the figure8 shape at the expense of regular respiratory functions. Some women actually buy chemicals and pills that alter how they look. The most interesting one was the chick feed story that I heard about a while back
that apparently makes woman enhance their curves.
But before we point a finger and blame anyone for their insecurities, we need to accept the flaw of society sexualizing women. A woman with certain facial features, big buttocks, big breasts and a close to a none existent waist has been labeled most appealing and therefore we have all grown to define such a woman as beautiful. Hopefully we will grow to teach our children that beauty is brains and that we are sexy enough for the right spouse we were meant to have, no need to try any harder. To get a male perspective on this, please click HERE to read my colleague Mitchell’s post.
