The pain in perfection

“Would you like to lose 5 pounds overnight?”; “How to get the perfect body in 3 easy steps”; “31 things to help you get and keep a man.” This. Magazine and news headlines along with assisting social networks pushing the world’s version of pretty. With beautiful celebrities and Instagram models endorsing sponsored products such as Teami, Flattummytea and FitTea, people are getting the message that their bodies aren’t good t enough. Slim waist, thigh gap, but with a fat ass. 

No matter what it is, if you don’t have it, you should get it. And if not for yourself, then for your significant other. But what effect does this have on people’s self esteem? 

All around the world people are striving to get and maintain what they believe is society’s idea of beauty. But what actually is beauty and where does the ideology come from? Overwhelmingly, the idea of beauty is defined differently in countries all around the world.

In Mauritania, for example, larger women are considered beautiful and wealthy, whereas in places like Europe, beauty is perceived as the complete opposite. This is an international issue impacting all cultures, all genders, all ages; some more than others. In places all around the world, beauty means something completely different. In Ethiopia, scarification is considered an art form and marks growth into adulthood. Kenyan women are loved for their low buzzcuts and stretched ear lobes. In Thailand girls as young as 5 years old begin the process of neck stretching with brass rings; each year more rings are added. In China, a tradition that is now banned, footbinding consisting of breaking certain areas on the foot and bending them over in an effort to make women’s feet appear smaller; but left a lifetime of disabilities. How can you possibly follow something that has no universal  meaning? 

Rather than it being for health purposes, losing weight is basically a  new fad. They even have skinny lollipops now. When did the word pretty equate to being skinny? Now with social media use being at an all-time high, this is all most people are seeing. Celebrities such as the Kardashians and various Instagram models posed up against the newest addition to Flat Tummy Tea. Commonly said phrases include, “You need this” and “Let’s lose that extra little blub”. This was the reason that a fake Chrissy Teigen magazine cover went viral. It “highlighted the industry’s unrealistic and often harmful messages about beauty, sexuality and the female body.” The overall message being you don’t look good enough so you should do this. 

Initially, you’d think that women are the only ones affected by this issue. We picture tensions rising between friend groups for who has the smallest waist. We have even heard of sororities circling girls “problem areas” during pledge week. All of this leads to bullying, which affects people’s self-esteem and leads to problems such as depression and anxiety. Some of which go unheard of until it is too late. This is especially prevalent within men due to society’s idea that a “manly man” doesn’t expose his feelings. So what’s their side of the story? How are they affected by these issues? Are they as affected as women? Who gets affected by it the most?

Even in the plus size industry both men and women are underrepresented and under-considered. We have exchanged the word fat for plus size due to the negative connotation, but even that term is exclusive. Typically plus size clothing  only considered sizes 14 – 22. If we were to put a group of fashion-forward plus size women in a room, they would know where each piece of clothing each person is wearing was bought from. But similarly, there are few to no stores specifically for plus size men, it’s usually just “get a bigger size”. 

In an anonymous interview, they stated, “When I was younger everything was about how I looked. Family members would constantly speak on the fact that I was bigger than the other kids. It was never-ending. I would always get my clothes from like Walmart or something because regular kids’ clothes never fit me. This led to me down spiraling once I got to middle school. I started getting into eating disorders and physically and emotionally I just felt terrible. But I felt great because everyone was complimenting me on the fact that I was getting smaller and asking what I was doing, I always responded with ‘nothing just eating better’ meanwhile I wasn’t eating at all. It somehow just made everything easier even though I felt worse than I did when I was a normal 180 pounds, but that wasn’t normal enough for the people around me”. Imagine being only 11 and thinking about how your body looks and nothing else. This is sadly the reality for a lot of young girls. 

It’s only gotten worse with our new age of technology. Price said, “Eating disorders are complex and there is no one particular factor that means you get one, but we feel eating disorders are on rise partly because of the challenges of today’s society. This includes social media and exam pressure. They don’t cause eating disorders; someone will be predisposed to be the type of personality who will develop an eating disorder … Then the challenges of social media and pressure to go to university all those things can compound so someone really does suffer with it.”

 As you can see, women are the ones who tend to be highlighted when speaking on the pressures of beauty standards, but they aren’t the only ones being affected. Although men aren’t as frequently talked about, they actually are at a slightly higher risk than women: “More than four in five men (80.7%) talk in ways that promote anxiety about their body image by referring to perceived flaws and imperfections, compared with 75% of women. Similarly, 38% of men would sacrifice at least a year of their life in exchange for a perfect body – again, a higher proportion than women”. Toxic masculinity, the concept that “dictates that men should be stoic and strong, both emotionally and physically”, seems to be continuously prevalent when bringing up the idea of men being vulnerable. 

Considering the fact that people tend to not know or talk about eating disorders amongst men, it is easy for them to fall between the cracks; therefore being misdiagnosed, diagnosed late or never diagnosed: “Males represent 25% of individuals with anorexia nervosa, and they are at a higher risk of dying, in part because they are often diagnosed later since many people assume males don’t have eating disorders.” These effects can also be hidden when you are considered an athlete because you are expected to look a certain way: “In weight-class sports (wrestling, rowing, horseracing) and aesthetic sports (bodybuilding, gymnastics, swimming, diving) about 33% of male athletes are affected.” 

Men typically keep their issues to themselves due to the unwanted risk of being thought of as “less than a man.” In an interview with UNITY sophomore Dewel Gonzalez, he confirmed this idea: “It’s like I’m under this constant pressure to be strong for the sake of the people around me, my girlfriend, my mom, my sister, I need to care for them as a MAN which we have been taught means to be strong and essentially emotionless. Especially in Hispanic/black culture where the men are taught to care for the women/people around them before themselves. Mental illness isn’t a thing where I come from. It’s seen as being dramatic, being lazy, just making excuses.” It isn’t easy for men either, they’re just acknowledged less. Wouldn’t this have an even worse effect on their mental states as they get older?

As people get older, stress-related events tend to occur more frequently. This on top of social traumas involving the way we look, lead us to seek out mental help. The men tend to seek out less help than women due to the idea that men are to “show no emotion.” Gateway counseling statistics show, “While over 14% of men in the US experience a mental health issue, very few of them get help. Only 60% of depressed men go for treatment, but over 72% of women obtain help. And while 9% of women make use of outpatient mental health services, only 5% of men do so.” This can result in life-long issues and lead to depression or suicide.

In the past six years, the amount of patients admitted to the hospital with potentially life threatening eating disorders has doubled. The Guardian explained that there has been “A surge in the number of teenage girls and women in their early 20s lies behind this dramatic rise. The admissions for those aged under 19 for anorexia went from 1,050 to 2,025 over the period examined.” This shows that outpatient treatment has not been working effectively, leading to people getting to severe states where hospital admittance was necessary. 

The issue continues to  progress. Within the same article, it was stated that “the admissions data was likely to be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of how big the problem had become.” 

If this continues to be portrayed as a women’s issue, men will continue not seeking help on the issue leading to a spike in their suffering; “Statistics estimate that approximately 10 million men will suffer from a clinically significant eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder.” A media analysis of the newspapers representations of eating disorders in men it was stated that eating disorders were seen as ““[…] not healthy and it’s decidedly not masculine,”displaying the amount of stigma not only in the general population of eating disorders but especially for men. 

Another subset of people that tend to be over looked when it comes to discussing beauty standards is the LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer) community. Though it doesn’t cross your mind instantaneously, “members of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) community feel pressure from the heterosexual and homosexual populations to look like one or the other.” 

Specifically, bisexual people tend to be labeled as not gay or straight enough, sometimes being comletely dismissed as a sexuality by both the gay and straight community. Lesbian women “[…] claim that “the identification with characteristics typically labeled as ‘feminine,’ such as passivity, dependence, and unassertiveness, reflect a need of approval from others and low self-esteem.” Men who identify strongly with these traits may be more likely to use extreme weight loss measures to help alleviate their low self-esteem.” This leads to an increase in the eating disorder epidemic, which sometimes goes unaccounted for. 

Everyone in society is striving to look like something other than themselves. “We are all victims of the media.” We will soon live in a world where the word beauty is no longer about being unique or your individuality, if that’s even what it is now. Instead, it will mean to fit society’s idea of perfection, which is constantly changing. 

You would think that they’d take it easy on kids considering they are still developing and need to figure out who they are, but not necessarily. Children are being pulled out of class and getting bullied by both other children and administration for making what they see as the wrong decision: “They say it’s not the first time their son’s sexual identity has caused him problems at school but that he has in fact been beaten up, teased and has had his belongings destroyed.” This starts the cycle of mental health issues at a young age because kids start to feel as if they are alone in this world, ““Incidents like the one yesterday only serve to further isolate these kids, who feel abandoned by the educators that are charged with their safety and well-being,.”

In this new technological era, we are lowering the age in which people start becoming concerned about their bodies. With children receiving phones and iPads at younger ages, they are quickly being exposed to the beauty standards perpetuated by the media. Children frequently ask questions like “What do I have to do to look like her?” or “How can I get bulkier like him?” 

Society tends to focus so heavily on one thing and then forget about the next. Over the past couple of years, obsesity has been a hot topic. We have put forth campaign after campaign, with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move to the DOE’s implementation of healthy eating policies, trying to get rid of or at least lessen the impact of the obesity epidemic. However, the opposite problem of undereating is a heavily stigmatized and ever growing epidemic, which almost always gets ignored. The United States as a whole, all genders and sexualities alike, need to band together in an effort to stop criticizing and start helping change our current perception of beauty. Maybe if we were less critical of one another we’d end up being happier individuals, not only with ourselves but be content with our lives, our houses, cars, amounts of money, etc. If we stop looking at the next person, we could open our eyes to the fact that we don’t have it bad at all.

In a video/article about Jazzmyne Robbins, Jazzmyne stated, “I’m on a journey to love me for me. If people love it, that’s awesome and if people don’t, that’s not my problem.” This way of thinking will lead to becoming more comfortable within our own skin and result in a more positive way of thinking about ourselves as well as others. 

These are your friends. Your partners. Your kids. Your siblings. Your parents. Your world that is being affected by these conditions. These stigmas and lack of assistance are what bring people to the state of hospitalization, sickness or even death. Not only are we deteriorating physically but mentally as well. Constantly worrying about our physical aesthetics is what can lead us down the path of depression and social anxiety because we will constantly be comparing ourselves to the next person. In regards to toxic masculinity, men are heavily concentrated on how they are being portrayed to both men and women; am I showing that I’m strong, did I give off too much vulnerability, what can I do better? It begins to be a cyclone always twisting in your head, it eventually takes over your life becoming the only thing you ever think about. It’s true when Theodore Roosevelt said,  “Comparison in the thief of joy.”

Our perception of beauty has shown growth as the years have progressed, whether it be with the additional inclusion of plus size clothes/models, or the representation of  body ‘abnormalities’ or quirks: with models such as Winnie Harlow, Ashley Graham, Tabria Majors and influencers like Lizzo, Amber Wagner, Jessamyn Stanley, but the job isn’t done. It’s up to society as a whole to start including instead of excluding; nothing is too feminine, too manly, too right, too wrong, everything is just right as it is and perfect in its own way.