Some women, especially younger girls look up to it girls and supermodels they see in fashion magazines, billboards, tv, social media, and everywhere in between. These gorgeous skinny women are everywhere, but how should we interpret it? Just a commercial trying to sell consumers a product or the fashion industry trying to sell us a body standard?
Karl Lagerfeld once quoted "unachievable beauty is a reminder to make an effort "And yes, a reminder indeed on how much we don’t look like supermodels, with their perfect skin, height, hair, and size. It puts a lot of pressure on women, especially younger girls who are easier to manipulate, which can result in an identity crisis or low self-esteem and worst-case developing an eating disorder.
It is important to remember that it is only a small percentage of the world who actually can fit into a size zero, and nobody should feel bad or ashamed that they don't. This is also connected to how magazines and blogs often are filled with tips on how to improve our appearance, without actually knowing anything about us, or our bodies, mental health, or medical history.
They offer us tips on how to lose weight, what colors to wear to make us look slimmer, how to change our diets, and try new ones, to buy vitamins, dieting aids, and facial products on how to make us look younger. The list goes on. Sometimes they even put a picture or name drop a celebrity, wearing or using the same products, especially in beauty and fashion magazines. They are almost guilting us into feeling uncomfortable in our skin and using it as a sales method. Body Shaming is a well-known term in the fashion industry, whatever it is being sized zero or plus size, someone always has something to say about someone's weight.
It is especially celebrities, who are common victims of body shaming, as apparently, it makes it okay when they are famous, for reporters and online bullies to share their opinion on what's wrong with their bodies. I could imagine that being in the public eye, you felt a lot of pressure to look your best, and if not and you are enjoying yourself on a nice vacation and later seeing paparazzi pictures online, of you in a bikini and some blog or reporters fat-shaming you or calling you out for being too thin, must be a horrible feeling. But of course, there is the option of just not caring what others think of your body.
One particular celebrity who has openly acted and spoken up about body shaming is the young musician Billie Eilish. She is known for her music, but just as much for her bold fashion choices of baggy sportswear that cover up her body.
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Instagram @billieeilish
Along with the picture above, she posts "if only I dressed normal id be so much hotter yeah yeah come up with a better comment, I'm tired of that one". Her style has become a part of her public image, and of course, people have a lot to say about an eighteen-year-old women's body and point out how she should be dressing. It makes me wonder how is this even a thing, body shaming because she wears to loose fitted clothes, how can that even provoke anybody? In Billie's Calvin Klein ad, she spoke out that one of the reasons, she wears baggy clothes is to prevent the world from body-shaming her "Nobody can be like, 'She's slim-thick,' 'she's not slim-thick,' 'she's got a flat ass,' 'she's got a fat ass.' Nobody can say any of that because they don't know.
You simply can't win, regardless if you are showing too much or too little skin, someone will body-shame you.
The fashion industry is great at making everything look pitch-perfect on the outside, but below the surface of these beautiful models, there is the cold truth that many of these models actually suffer from eating disorders and in some cases even dying from it. Some of the general statistics from ANAD ( National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders) website show that every 62 minutes at least one person dies as a direct result of an eating disorder in the United States.
This is something to think about next time you are wishing, being thinner, and starving yourself to achieve the look. Magazines are telling us what so wear, fans and haters are telling us how to look, photographers are photoshopping bodies, and models are fainting on the runways caused by lack of nutrition. The whole system is infected by the norm of looking like a size zero, regardless of the consequences it may have.
It makes me wonder what is the future of all this madness?
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