Why We Obsess About Our Weight
We live in a culture that teaches girls and women that our value comes from our bodies, and that we must keep those bodies small. It’s no wonder that many of us have developed a love/hate relationship with food. While you may not consider yourself to have an eating disorder, the truth is that when it comes to our collective relationship with food, we clearly have some issues. After all, how many women and girls do you know who constantly think or talk about food? How many have a sense of guilt, shame, or self-loathing based on what they eat? How many eat for comfort or out of anxiety?
My book, Healthy Is The New Skinny, is your guide to self-love in a "Picture Perfect" world.
How many of your friends and family members have gone from one extreme form of eating to another? A beauty ideal has been created that is abnormally thin, leading to a culture of disordered eating in generations of girls and women in pursuit of acceptance, value, and love.
Although statistics abound, I don’t need Harvard to tell me that the world views and treats females as secondary. I see women’s second-class status in the way that the basic human rights of so many women around the world are denied. I see it in the double standard women face when it comes to sexuality, where men are praised for being sexually active as a symbol of manhood while women are looked down on for the same behavior. I see it in the lack of women in leadership and managerial positions, and unequal wages between men and women for the same work. These issues are nothing new. For generations, there have been women who have dedicated their lives to achieving equality and a better world for all.
Why don’t I know any women who like how they look? Why do I always feel as if I am never enough? Why does my 85-year-old grandmother incessantly ask, “Does my hair look okay?” I don’t know about you, but to this day, I have never looked at an 85-year-old woman and critiqued her hair, yet Gramma is sure that this is the topic of conversation no matter where we go. Why?
Why do we feel bad about ourselves?
I have traveled to many high schools and colleges to give Re-Model Me presentations on media manipulation and body image. During these workshops, I share candidly how my experiences as a model were not fulfilling to my soul and how that led me on a journey to discover who I really was and what I wanted for my life beyond being viewed as beautiful by others, how my drive for change propelled me into creating two successful businesses by the age of 25. I describe how I lost 40 pounds and in the process discovered what real “health” meant to me, and how today I preach words of female empowerment and self-love to help women of all ages return to an intimate relationship with their true selves. After every event, groups of girls wait to speak with me. While they start out by saying, “I was so inspired by everything you said,” the conversation always turns to “How do I become a model?”
I have learned so much about how girls think from these encounters. Hand in hand with their question about how to become a model, they also open up about their emotional struggles with how they perceive their own bodies. Sadly, self-loathing is the dominant theme. Their feelings are fresh and raw. As much as they might tell me how inspired they were, the words they use reveal to me that they still hold the belief that modeling is the key to having the life they want, that being a model is the answer to that deep sense of insecurity, self-loathing, and unhappiness they tell me they feel.
It has become clear to me that far too many young girls fall prey to the notion that being a model, actress, or pop star is the only way they can feel valued and important, or even be heard. While it’s easy to think that if you were a model, then people would care what you have to say, it’s just not accurate.
When I opened Natural Model Management (NMM) in 2011, I took a giant leap of faith, left my representation at the top agency in the industry, and started to represent myself. My goal was to empower myself and other models to have a healthy experience in the industry and, with any luck, do what I could to actually transform the industry for the better from the inside out. When we started, I was the only model we represented.
What is perceived and portrayed as beauty in the United States are the following physical features: light skin, above average height, a perfect complexion, long hair, thinness, a large butt, big boobs, a small waist, full lips, thin legs, thin arms, a small nose, and big eyes. All of those body parts rarely coincide naturally without plastic surgery. Furthermore, we’re often comparing our real selves with digitally altered images of celebrities who have had surgery to fit this beauty ideal!
Our beauty ideal is one that is not natural to the female body, making it unattainable without altering the body through unnatural means. Female models represent the beauty ideal in our culture for girls and women. We are raised with the belief that youth and beauty are the sources of our value and importance. Perhaps the most unattainable features of models—if you don’t possess them naturally—are extreme thinness and above average height. “Models have always been skinny and tall,” legendary fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg stated, “and that’s fine as long as they’re healthy.” But are they?
Sadly, most female runway models have a body mass index (BMI) consistent with anorexia. BMI is a weight-to height ratio. According to the World Health Organization, an adult with a BMI below 18.5 is considered underweight; a BMI below 16 indicates being severely thin. A low BMI is associated with certain health risks, such as an impaired immune system, bone loss, iron-deficiency anemia, and cardiac problems. The average model is five nine, weighs 110 pounds, and has a BMI of 16—far below what’s healthy.
When I came up with the name “Healthy Is the New Skinny” for a body-image blog I was creating, I wanted to draw attention to the pressure models face in the industry to be ultrathin. In the fashion industry, no matter how small girls are, it seems people are always suggesting that they get smaller to be more successful. That is wrong. If we care about women, the focus should not be on making girls skinnier but instead on being healthy. If the industry allowed models of various sizes to be successful at a top level, then models would have options when it comes to what size they can be to attain that success.
Of course, not all underweight women or models are anorexic. It is important to realize that there are, of course, models who are naturally that thin. What is unhealthy is that only very thin images are being used as an ideal for all women. It can be extremely damaging to girls’ self-image— and health—to glamorize a body that the vast majority of girls would never be able to attain without developing an eating disorder and being extremely tall to begin with. The fact is that girls are impressionable, and they will do what they can to emulate what they see in photos of models.
A recent phenomenon across the country is the attainment of a “thigh gap.” What is it? A thigh gap occurs when a woman stands with her feet or knees together, and her inner thighs do not touch. Numerous variables go into the amount of space between a person’s thighs—like the width of the hips and pelvis—but teenage girls with poor self-esteem are vulnerable to developing eating disorders when exposed to such body trends. Models have thigh gaps, so teenage girls want thigh gaps. Models are sexy, so teenage girls want to be sexy. Models are skinny, so girls grow up with the ingrained desire to be ultrathin.
What power does being thin hold, such that Western society values it so highly? It was a revelation to me that in our culture, “skinny” is more than just a standard of beauty. For girls and women, being skinny is symbolic of popularity, wealth, success, happiness, and acceptance. Whether or not we actually pursue a career in modeling, being skinny gives us worth in the eyes of others. This mentality drives the subconscious belief that we are not enough as we are, and we need to alter ourselves to receive validation from those around us.
The Fantasy of Perfection
And now for a reality check: The average woman in the United States is five four and size 14. That’s right, and that very same average woman is marketed to using images of models who are five nine and size 0 or 2. The fashion industry justifies the size disparity between models and real women by saying that models aren’t meant to be real but rather aspirational. Using this approach, marketers create a feeling of strong desire or longing in potential customers. They want consumers to buy the advertised clothing because they aspire to look like the digitally altered images of unattainable bodies.
The truth is that we do not need to be models to be beautiful, happy, successful, empowered, and loved. All girls and women (including models) have an opportunity to discover what beauty means to them individually, outside what they have been taught to believe. Like health, beauty is not one-dimensional; it is limitless, and as soon as we begin to understand that, we will no longer see ourselves through our insecurities. Instead, we will perceive the beauty of our mind, body, and spirit.
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