Dangerous Beauty..... My thoughts.....

I'm tired of all the pressures that come with being female! I'm also tired and angry about the fact that our culture seems to be obsessed with the need to be thin and beautiful. It goes deep, perhaps too deep for it to ever change.
There seems to be a feeling that “thinness” is directly linked to success, and there is also a deep seated belief in the 'what is beautiful is good' stereotype – an irrational but deep-seated belief that physically attractive people possess other desirable characteristics such as intelligence, competence, social skills, confidence – even moral virtue. (The good fairy/princess is always beautiful; the wicked stepmother is always ugly)
I find the ideas and images we are bombarded with scary, insulting, mind boggling and also contradictory. These fucking terrible magazines that are celebrity obsessed are some of the worst peddlers of this bullshit. One minute they are crucifying someone for being too thin, the next page they are obsessing about someone being too fat. (Usually in reality, the “fat” person is probably about a size 12……) And they are then stuffed with endless adverts for all the products we need in order to keep beautiful and young looking and thin. How can these people sleep at night? (MONEY!!! FUCKING EVIL BASTARDS!!!)
Such a huge pressure, and hard to ignore, no matter how much scorn I personally pour on them! I can see that these images and magazines are shallow and pointless. I understand that my sense of worth should not just be based on my dress size, and you know what? Maybe she is NOT born with it, maybe she is computer generated and airbrushed! However, I feel outraged and distressed that I have to live in a society that judges people so harshly on looks. I rage that I have to try extra hard to be seen as attractive as I am a couple of stone overweight. I have breasts and hips and a big bum and look like a woman, but the media would vilify me for this because I do not have the sort of figure where everything is taught and flat and smooth and thin and, frankly, often boy-like.
I find it insulting that we are told the people we need to aspire to look like are often not real women anyway! It just makes me so angry that what is being peddled as the ideal body shape or face has been manipulated on a computer and so therefore is absolutely unobtainable!! I think it is these advances in technology that have turned concerns that have always been around into something verging more on an unhealthy obsession. A couple of little facts……
· The current media ideal of thinness for women is achievable by less than 5% of the female population
· It has been estimated that young women now see more images of outstandingly beautiful women in one day than our mothers saw throughout their entire adolescence.
· In 1917, the physically perfect woman was about 5ft 4in tall and weighed nearly 10 stone. Even 25 years ago, top models and beauty queens weighed only 8% less than the average woman, now they weigh 23% less. The current media ideal for women is achievable by less than 5% of the female population – and that's just in terms of weight and size. If you want the ideal shape, face etc., it's probably more like 1%.
As I said, the pressure is enormous and makes me feel so exhausted, so I'm going to try and battle against all of this madness and unhealthy thinking. I refuse to let these body fascists make me feel depressed, stressed, guilty, shameful, insecure, and body-dissatisfied because of their increased endorsement of the thin-ideal stereotype. I worry about bringing a little girl into the world, as I'm terrified about all the pressure she will be under to be “beautiful”, and it would break my heart if she believes herself to be ugly. It’s my responsibility to foster her sense of self-esteem, so I MUST begin to foster my own.
We are living in a skewed society, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or buy into the bullshit. I'm going to try and feel beautiful for who I am. I'm going to try and like myself for my emotional attributes as well as my physical. After all, people who only believe their self worth is based on what they look like will NEVER be happy. I am not abnormal just because I'm not a size 10 and I reject the standards they try and place on me! It feels like a massive battle, but its one I'm willing to take on as the madness and the onslaught has to STOP. When low self esteem, eating disorders and self-mutilation through cosmetic surgery or just pure self harm are rampant in society because of media bombardment, how could I morally not battle?