1:38 p.m.
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was tormented every day by a horrendous monster that lived in her mirror. Every morning and every night she would look into the mirror and hope that it was gone, but it was always there staring back at her. One day the princess couldn’t take it anymore, she grabbed her mother and cried out for her to look into the mirror and see the monster!
The queen looked into the mirror and wrinkled her brow in confusion. After a few minutes of concentration the queen looked back at her daughter and said, “I don’t see anyone but you and I.” It was then that the princess watched as the monster mimicked her movements in the mirror and realized that it was her.
Was she actually a monster? No. The truth is that in today’s society, with all the images of “perfection” circulating the media, you’re more likely to find a girl that feels like a monster than one that feels like a princess. Our girls are being dethroned everywhere.
“According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, nearly 70% of girls in grades five through 12 said magazine images influence their ideals of a perfect body,” reported the Huffington Post in early Sept. Recent runway photographs of this year’s New York Fashion Week also display their trademark super-skinny, super-tall models modeling clothing that very rarely look normal on anything other than a size zero.
It’s statistics time. Actress Christina Hendricks, who stars on the hit AMC show Mad Men, was named Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive in May of 2010. Her magazine cover read, “Woman.” As in the woman, with measurements of 39-30-39, standing at about 5’8”. Kate Moss, at the peak of her career, reportedly weighed 100 pounds and stood at 5’7’’. She was the face for the 1990s through early 2000s modeling craze called Heroine Chic, which was characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, and jutting bones. Which would you rather be? The Woman or the Heroine Chic? Society today values skinny over healthy and bones over curves. Does this mean that everyone should start consuming their own weight in sugar and trans fats? No. This means that people should stop trying to put measurements on beautiful. My message is to love your curves and love your body. Rejoice in every strand of hair, every curve and every mark. I can proudly say that I would rather be my 5’1’’, 125 pound self any day of the week than be six inches taller and 20 pounds lighter.
It took me many years of self-consciousness to realize that I was the monster in the mirror. Nobody else saw me the way I saw myself, and because of that I made myself out to be something terrible that I wasn’t. I turned myself into a statistic. I was a part of that shaded area in the pie chart that shows who hates their body and who loves themselves for who they are. Please, don’t be a statistic; empower the girls around you by reminding them, and yourself, that you are all beautiful creatures.
You don’t have to shatter that mirror. All you have to do is smile at that monster and say, “I am gorgeous.”
