Sunday, September 21, 2014

Women and Body Image

As a woman in today's society it is hard to love the body we were given. Television, movies and magazines have really skewed our views. Media is what we look to in order to find out what is in, right? Especially as women. What to wear, how to look, how thin to be, etc. What is thought of as beautiful has really changed over the years. In the early 1900's curvacious hourglass figures were what was hot. Camille Clifford, Louise Brooks, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe to name a few. As time went on the models continued to get thinner and thinner. All the while the society was getting bigger and bigger. As of today however, I'm starting to see a rise of women who are getting fit and I'm hoping the new "in" body of the future will be strong, defined and healthy. Don't get me wrong I see beauty in all shapes and sizes but I would rather our future children aspire to be fit and not thin.

As a young girl I was always picking apart my appearance and wishing I looked different. Didn't want fine thin straight hair, blonde eyebrows or light eyelashes. Wished my eyes were green instead of blue. Would have loved to be darker skinned instead of so fair. You get the picture. As a woman, I am sure you can relate. Things did not improve much as the years went by either. As a teen I wanted a bigger chest, rounder butt and a thin waist. You know, the hourglass figure everyone dreams of. I would nearly starve myself at times and picked up smoking as a way to curb my appetite. I didn't take it to the extreme of anorexia or bulimia like a lot of girls out there but I definitely had a really poor body image and wasn't all that healthy because of it.

A chemical imbalance in my late 20's, due to an overuse of harmful substances, massive stress and tons of past traumas put me in the hospital and on lots of medications. After 6 years of steady weight gain and lack of exercise I was at the height of my self loathing. I tried slim fast diets with no luck. I really didn't know how to eat healthy, had a bad relationship with food and didn't know how to cook either. With lots of encouragement from a special guy in my life I was shown a new way to look at food and how it fuels the body. Now, I no longer strive to be thin like the models on TV, I want to be fit like the women on my workout DVD's. How about you, how is your self image?