The fashion industry has been manipulating our brains and feeding us with ‘the perfect image of a girl’. What is a perfect girl? Long hair, pretty face and a size zero. That’s the image being forced upon us regardless of whether we like it or not. Movie producers, directors, fashion designers; all look for girls that are either a size zero or a size two. This puts a ton of pressure on the female population.
The extent girls go to, just to look like a size zero is horrendous! Women will starve themselves in hopes of losing that stubborn body fat that just won’t go away, they will eat foods that they despise and can’t swallow down their throat and most importantly, they will buy clothing to fit into, not clothes that fit them. If that doesn’t make you want to throw up with disgust at what society has done to us, then you’re inhumane.
If a girl is a size zero, or a size two; she will be considered fit and well for modeling or being used in advertisements. But if her hips are too wide and she’s a size four, she’s automatically taken as “too fat” or “not slim enough to be a model”. So basically, when a girl’s body type doesn’t fit into a 0 or 2, she is known to be a plus size model in the modeling industry. Even if she doesn’t meet the mark by an inch, she will be labeled as a plus size model.
Why do these sizes even exist, you ask? Well, to keep the spark alive, silly! (says the girl writing this, in a sarcastic tone). If you could afford everything in the world, would you still want to work, earn and save? No, you wouldn’t. Similarly, these unrealistic body standards exist because only s few can meet them (how lucky do you feel right now, eating that bag of Cheetos)? The rest of us, ordinary people can’t meet these standards unless we dedicate our lives to it, get a trainer, hit the gym every day, exercise tons, eat salads, forget burgers, fries and cheese even exists, buy supplements and consume them on an everyday basis. All this, just to fit in and get featured on a page?
Here’s a crazy fact. Unless you’re not a 0 or 2, you’re plus size. That renders more than half the world as plus size and ‘Fat’. Here’s another crazy fact. Clothing stores pretend to be size inclusive and claim that a size 16 or above (in some countries) is a plus size. But if you ask for a shirt in a size 8, the look you’ll get will make Annabelle seem like child’s play. (pun intended).
Listen to me (or read). You don’t need to be a size zero to feel beautiful. You don’t need to eat greens that you wish were chocolate. You don’t have to fit in some crazy man-made size chart. Whatever body size you have, embrace it. Love your jiggly thighs, be good to your fat belly, look at your arms and feel proud. It’s high time you let society define beauty standards and the way you feel. You define yourself.
