It not that serious. There are more impt things in life than looks . Today ,I was in the store shopping and one girl was complaining about how fat she is ,and she is like a size 2. Nemerous of studies has shown that men perfer women with curves.
I think it is serious - this whole topic is pretty serious. I was once passing acquaintances with someone much like your size 2 girl there in your story. I couldn't stand her because of her personality (extremely judgmental/"always right"/attention gwar/etc.), but when she said the following I just saw her for who she really was and that was.. someone with a really serious self-image problem. She said right in front of me that if she was ever a size 7, she would kill herself. She was joking and just being bratty, but I was just like "Wow, how ignorant." The truth is, she has an eating disorder. She's bulimic - which means she is unnaturally a size 4 at nearly my height. I'm tall - not the tallest gazelle out there, but taller than average for a woman in this country. I thought to myself, "Yikes," but at the same time, I'm very much like her.
I don't have an eating disorder though, but does it really matter?
I remember being unnaturally consumed by my weight when I was a teenager and I wasn't even overweight. In my head, I thought I was. I'd been looking at fashion magazines since forever, basically. To me, those women were beautiful and I wanted to be like them. I still seek out and appreciate that kind of beauty (just thank God I stopped caring about sewing even though I still care for fashion - to be in that industry would be dreadful for me). Thankfully, what helped me get past that a little was when women in sports became big and they started getting highlighted in the same magazines I was browsing. They named their physical stats and that really helped me embrace my own. Because I will never be a size 2 or even 4. Even when my corpse dries out and all that's left are bones, still won't measure at that size! And that's okay. But, it's really hard to come to a place where you really like
your size - especially if you're someone who's really hard on herself. I am. That's why in the Losing Weight thread, I didn't "woo-hoo" at losing 4 lbs. That's "meh" to me. Anyone else would probably call that a success. Being pre-pregnancy would be a success to some people. At this stage, I'm looking to better myself from what transpired during my last relationship - not that I blame anyone but myself for those choices. We lived so unhealthy, but that's almost expected here. Late night drinking, even later night Taco Hell runs at 3 am - and I stopped dancing which was my cardio. But anyway, anyway..
I think that weight is something we feel like we can control. To someone with an eating disorder, the rest of their world could be falling apart but their disorder is actually what creates
some order for them - and that control means everything. Whether you're talking about cutting out serious calories from your diet, throwing up after your meals and snacks or gorging on 4 value meals from McDonald's as part of your 6,000 calorie/day diet it all means control for them. That control becomes comforting. I don't believe that anyone with an eating disorder is ever content with where they're at. So, that comfort is short-lived. And the cycle must be repeated until something breaks up that destructive mindset.
To be honest, I think even the "health freaks" enjoy the amount of control that their diet and exercise regimens require. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with that, but to compare it to something people here might understand, the same kind of enjoyment you may get from those things can be correlated to those with eating disorders and what they have to do to keep up with it.
I think the overall theme here should be that people need to embrace the bodies God gave us and to respect them. If we
do that, there would probably not be severely obese people; there probably wouldn't be super-thin people. There would probably be slim to athletic to overweight people and we could all just shut up about complaining that we're the wrong size.
Oh and as others have probably already stated, you can have curves and still be slim. A lot of people consider curves to be the overweight parts of the body or more ample breasts or bum. (I think the loud-and-proud obese individuals are of the knee-jerk reaction to the plethora of unhealthy messages and images we are "fed" each day) But, slim women who don't have either of those can still have a slimmer midsection which emphasizes the hips more. Although I believe that beautiful people come in all shapes and sizes, I do think we're just at a really unhealthy time right now in general in this country (and I talk about this country because I don't live in any other). We're constantly bombarded with high fat "food" choices, un
godly large serving sizes (because people want to get a lot for their money) and our job choices tend to be ones where we don't get a bit of natural exertion during our day (mid-day runs to the bathroom, water cooler or fridge really don't count). In addition, when we
do go home, we tend to push it with other "mental activities" like college, messageboards and the like that ensures more time is spent away from natural physical activity. To top that off, we women are still buying into these magazines, tv shows and whatever else that seem to insinuate that being skinny or slender or lithe - and only those - is beautiful. I don't doubt men do this, too. It's the only reason six packs exist because they sure aren't attractive - a bit joking on that one, but very true for me. It can be attractive... but so are shapes that aren't so skinny or slender or lithe. What about the athletic types? What about those who do naturally have a bit more "padding" on their bodies? I'm not talking severely obese or even obese, but overweight people are beautiful too and sometimes, it really
can't be helped. I've met enough people in my life - and been alive myself long enough - to know that sometimes, it's a matter of putting the fork DOWN when you're full and sometimes, it's a matter of going to doctors and specialists to see what can be done and if nothing can, embrace the hell out of that body.
So many years later... after all the chicky magazines, after actually
getting unhealthy, after facing my own unhealthy fixations I'd like to think I've come a long way, but even in my early 30's I have a hell of a long way to go. It's a constant battle - and maybe not constant in the way that it's with me 24/7, but at least once a week I hate how I look.. and it's not because my outfit sucks.