What does the “desired body” look like? I’m guessing “rock-hard abs” and curves in “all the right places”. What does that even mean? In today’s magazine, one can see beautiful women everywhere, who seem to be “flawless” and “perfect”. Most girls dream to achieve the “perfect Victoria’s Secret model body”. Men often look at other men to compare their muscle size and abdomen. Today’s world is an extremely competitive world. One has to constantly one up the guy or girl to our left at the gym.

After hard work, girls and guys are often disappointed to not be able to live up to the “standards” they see in the Playgirl and Playboy magazines or other people they see on a daily basis. With the technological advances happening, Photoshop has made the real pictures not so real anymore, and the pictures make it unrealistic or achievable to get even close to.

In society today, guys and girls are fat shamed by friends, family, and social media. There are jokes made every day toward people, in general, that may seem all fun and games, but it can change someone’s own view of themselves. Katie Hopkins tweeted, “Jesus, what happened to Kelly Clarkson? Did she eat all of her backing singers? Happily I have a wide screen”. Louis Burnham tweeted, “Remember ladies: Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”.  The Legionnaire tweeted out, “One of the downsides of obesity is that you run the risk of being harpooned for whale oil when shit hits the fan”. This next one comes from our very own President, and he tweets, “I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke”

These tweets may sound like harmless fun, but to someone else, it could make them wonder about their own body and whether it is acceptable or not. People’s thoughts on what overweight looks like is saddening. I asked one person what size that a normal girl should be. They stated, “No tight dress needs to be worn if you are above a size six”. Another said, “I think that 130 pounds for girls 18 and up is an appropriate weight.”  Isn’t it sad thinking about what others think an “appropriate” weight is. Looking at these comments and other people’s body, what can one do when they’ve tried to “fix” themselves and look more like the person on their left at the gym? They often turn to malnourishment to help compensate for their own insecurities.

There are many eating disorders, but the most common eating disorders include: Anorexia nervosa, Bulimia nervosa, and Binge eating disorder. All of them are similar in the hopes that the person loses weight. The thought behind it is “if I make myself sick after eating” or “eat a cracker a day” or even “ i’ll skip two days of eating and binge the third day” is the hopes of losing weight and getting the “desired body”. It often includes little food being put into the stomach and excessive workouts to try and balance the food that one actually does intake.

The problem with this is it can lead to serious health conditions such as: cardiac-arrest, kidney failure, pancreatitis, early-onset osteoporosis, suicide, self-injury, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and, as ironic as this is, obesity. If these people would look at this list, they would see more risks then benefits from it, and it doesn’t even help with the “purpose” behind the eating disorders.

Looking at anorexia nervosa for a moment, the reason that it is a never ending disorder is because when girls become anorexic there is always the risk of going into a relapse. When a person starves themselves like that, upon the decision of eating again, their body will not understand how to store the food like normal. It will begin to store as much of that sugar and fat as it possibly can for the longest it can because the metabolism is messed up and trying to keep as much food as it can in the stomach to try and match up with the lack of nourishment. So, they will end up gaining a lot of weight when they do intake food. When the person sees this, they immediately start starving themselves again and begin to do intensive workouts to try and lose the weight that they did gain. So, looking back on it there really are no rewards being reaped from eating disorders.

Even though there is the negative side to this, there is also a positive side to my research. I asked one last person, and they responded to me, “What even is skinny? You know, I hate that word. People have been brainwashed into believing the bullshit that social media feeds us on what a body should and should not look like. Your body is acceptable just the way it is, and you don’t need to lose weight unless you truly want to lose weight. You shouldn’t try to please others because if they don’t love you for who you are then that’s their problem and they will officially gain the shitty title in my books.”

There is something beautiful that could be started if everyone just stopped listening to the type of people at the top and started listening to the type of people like that last person. Please, don’t listen to what the majority of society says about what the desired body looks like. There is not a specific body type that is “perfect”. Listen to the last guy’s response and take it to heart because his, in my own opinion, is the most-true. I say that, “you are radiant from a size 0 to a size whatever. Size does not matter.”