Growing up in a traditional Italian family and community, the concept of “stuffing yourself silly,” was not an unfamiliar one when it came to dinner time, Sunday lunches, and especially not on big holidays. Similar ideas had been instilled from a very young age, and are often revisited and reinforced particularly because of my age and gender.
Interestingly enough, on a lunch break at work, a co-worker were enjoying and I were talking while standing over a plate or freshly (homemade, might I add) baked bagels and other baked goods. After a fair amount of time indulging, it comes to my attention that my co-worker had not touched anything the entire time we were talking. When I go to ask her why in her right mind that she did not dive into the plate, she simply responded to me with the phrase “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Various thoughts ran through my mind with mixed emotions attached to them.
Little did I know, “calorie watching” is a very popular concept to many female individuals of various shapes and sizes. This is a very unforgiving and indiscriminate mindset that most women tend to adopt as they enter into their teenage years, and tend to linger on into mid and more often then not, late adulthood. Some of the questions, to name a few, I asked myself are: Where does one come up with such an outrageous train of thought? How does one comfortably live and function with such tight nutritional restrictions? Why do individuals feel that this mindset is the only method of achieving their “perfect figure?” The specific age group that caught my attention and interest was that of early adult females aged 17-21 years old. This age group was chosen specifically because this is the point where individuals start becoming increasingly independent and responsible for making crucial life choices with waning guidance from parents, siblings, etc. Also it seems rational to assume that at this age the target audience should be held accountable for their own choices and be able to confidently and empirically justify them.
When we turn to the media, specifically the movie stars (such as Kate Moss, is known for her skinny physique and the individual would had originally said: “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”) and all of our favourite entertainers, we tend to see the female role models all being super slender, tall, fit, etc. So naturally, the average person begins to start thinking that this is ideally how every “beautiful” woman should look like. Even most women’s magazines will have silly headlines on the front cover right as the summer season rolls in saying things like: “how to get you best bikini body” or “10 tips for looking thin” or “the secret to flat abs revealed.” And sadly enough, it is captions like these that get consumers hooked and wanted more. It then becomes the dream to go do whatever new workouts or new diets that this actress did or this magazine recommends in order to achieve that “perfect figure.” There are even websites that exist, such as the popular pro anorexia website “pro-ana-nation.livejournal.com/,” where girls can post on forum boards information about themselves and their eating disorder. Some common things these girls post are: their age, height, highest weight, lowest weight, current weight, ultimate goal weight, favourite diet food, favourite binge food, favourite exercises, if anyone else knows about the individuals eating disorder, if the individual thinks they are “skinny” or “fat” in comparison to their friends, if the individual is depressed, if the individual thinks about attempting suicide, if the individual cuts themselves, and the list goes on. At first when I saw these “profiles” I realize that the only numbers these girls are looking at is height and primarily weight to determine whether they are considered “fat” or “skinny.” It also seems a bit odd that there are only two categories to be sorted into and that health and what we ideally want to look like is based on our weight. This is of course not taking into account lean muscle mass or body fat percentage, body type and bone structure (ecto-, meso-, endomorphs), or other important physiological determinants of health, but strictly height and weight. Then these individuals make a statement on if they feel skinny or fat amongst their friends. This shows that these values are strongly tied in with peers and other people’s opinions and impressions of you as well.
