Thursday, January 10, 2013

Size does matter

Well at least when we're talking about the size of your heart, or your brain, but when it comes to your dress size, I really couldn't care less!
The fashion industry is notorious for coping flack about using unhealthy sized females to sell their products, and yes it's true, some fashion houses could do with more meaty models, but what it really comes down to is the way we see ourselves. I've personally never looked at a catwalk model and wished to be her size, however I have looked at friends and peers pressuring themselves to be skinnier, and thought I should probably be doing the same thing. You see there seems to be this thing which has been going since the beginning of time amongst women known as bragging. Whether against a very best friend or someone whom you can't stand the sight of, women are competitive!
From my experience it happens in one of two ways.
"Binge Bashing" is the first way, anyone who's seen Mean Girls will know what I'm talking about. Comments such as "I'm so fat" " I'm so ugly" "this is wrong with me" "I hate this about myself" start rolling off the tongue as each member of the group outwardly expresses what they hate about themselves, and before you know it, every ones feeling lower than a piece of celery's calorie intake. This group hate session can never produce any happy feelings as with each persons concern voiced, a choir of "omg don't be silly I'm so much more *insert self loathing comment* than you". It's almost as if the person who hates themselves the most is declared some kind of winner. To all the men out there, you have no idea what kind of crazy we can get to when in a self loathing pack. It's sick, honestly.
Then you have the flip side "Gym Gurus" the girls who claim to have all the answers, who apparently live at the gym and eat only pure wholesome vegan protein packed foods, even if you saw them sneak a cheeseburger just the other day. To be honest, anyone who's ever gotten into the gym scene, or even just attempted to clean up their eating habits is most likely guilty of this (I'll admit it, I've done it to my friends, girls I'm sorry, I'm clearly no Michelle Bridges and I love M&Ms too much to ever give them up, but you already know this).
So why do we subject our friends to such a giant carbload of crap?! Because it makes us feel so dam good! It's riveting to not only feel healthy but feel we've have achieved something everyone wishes they could. Let's be honest we all wish we were motivated to be as thin and healthy as Miranda Kerr but it's not our job to be one of the richest super models in the world, so you can understand where the motivation to work out 6hrs a day is lacking.
Yes it's only natural that we want to share our knowledge and educate our friends when we're on our healthy bandwagon, feeling fabulous and shining from the inside out, but I think there's a big difference between a friendly chit chat and some kind of snobby "I'm much healthier than you" garble, and this is where we need to change.
Over breakfast it came to light that a friend of mine stopped following a mutual friend of ours because the health kick crap was getting out of hand. To be honest, I too was over the weekly abdominal update photo, but I honestly wondered if our mutual friend understood how upsetting/ridiculous her weekly gym pictures were becoming.
I luckily have a beautiful man in my life who loves me despite my dress size, but for anyone who was feeling a little insecure, I imagine this constant bombardment of "look how good I look" would be more than enough to spark some unhealthy eating and exercise regimes.
I'm no psychology expert and I know nothing of the complexities of the female mind but girls,
next time you feel like having a bitch about how fat you are, or you want to brag about how many times you've been to the gym this week, just stop and think before you open your mouth, you could be quietly killing your very best friend.