Another Bend

Have you ever gone to the fair and looked in the funny glass mirrors? Some of them make you appear tall and thin and some of them make you look short and fat, but it’s all just an illusion. I feel like we all carry around a funny glass mirror in our brains. The way we see ourselves and the world around us is all relative. The way I view myself may be completely different from the way that you see me. And who can truly say who’s right? Our worlds are shaped by our environments. As Sam said, in her country being thin is seen as a sign of poverty, something no girl would want to be. Yet, here we live in a country where skinny is what we aspire to. It’s just another bend in the funny glass mirror, a different way of seeing the world around us. I recently posted my declaration of self love, my quest to find peace with my own body. Reading over that post, I realized I was a bit idealistic. Have you ever tried accepting all of yourself; body, mind and soul? I feel I’m safe in saying that it’s almost impossible. I can tell myself over and over again that no matter what the judges on America’s Next Top Model say, 5’11’ and 110 pounds is not the ideal weight. Somehow, however, the message that “thin is in” finds its way into my thoughts, pushing me to live up to the “ideal standards.” It’s everywhere, from the airbrushed cover girls to the anorexic celebutants that grace the cover of every tabloid staring back at you from the grocery store checkout. The message is implanted so deep inside of us, that hating your body has almost become a social activity. Girls will compare their fat, grasping at every last pinch of overhang, claiming to be the fattest, but secretly hoping to be the thinnest. So you see, the funny glass mirrors are all around us, constantly reshaping the image of what we thought was our world. No wonder it’s so hard to love our own bodies when the image we see reflected back is so distorted no one really knows how to get it back to normal.