America the Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments

May 29, 2012 at 1:27 pm Leave a comment

As I tried to eat “healthy” during the Memorial Day weekend, I ran across an email that talked about the unhealthy dieting habits of Americans, particularly women and especially our teenaged girls. Once they mentioned teens, I was especially interested, when I thought back to how my weight seesawed during my teen/twenty something years. I always felt overweight especially in my perception of how I looked versus how the models looked on the magazines that I loved to read!

There were two San Jose, CA high school essay winners on body image from EDRC (eating disorder education outfit). Here’s one:

“Perfectly Imperfect”

You don’t know how much of my time is spent thinking and dreaming. Lying in bed creating a picture in my mind of what my life will become one day, just like any other girl like you and me. And at times our dreams are shot down, at times even crushed to the point where you feel like you just can’t get back up. Day by day we get judged and criticized by our appearance, why? Because we’re not “perfect”.

Well define perfect, am I not skinny enough? Is my skin not perfect? Is my hair not pretty? We feel the need to try to satisfy others, people who don’t take the time to look beyond our appearance. I will not let someone label me as not perfect because I am perfectly imperfect. Every single imperfection to you is just another thing that makes me unique, we are all special in our own way.

We are all beautiful and should not let anyone tell us otherwise, life is beautiful and so are you and when you can’t seem to find it look the person in the eye staring back at you in the reflection on the wall and smile back because it’s been there all along.

Vanessa

Check out this link and volunteer your time if you can, or at least be more aware: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drpvF7gszOU

Entry filed under: Parenting. Tags: beauty, body image, dieting, eating disorder, perception, teens, thin, unhealt, unhealthy.

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