I remember the exact moment I became preoccupied with my weight.
I was fifteen years old, at the peak of my dance career, and a friend of mine threw a party for our performing group. We were celebrating our invitation to Germany, to participate in a showcase that included some of the world’s most elite dancers. We downed pizza, cake, soda, chips and dip late into the night, while snapping pictures of each other every thirty seconds. MySpace was just coming into its own, and we all had online photo albums to fill.
The day following the party, when we had all slept off the sugar and caffeine, the uploading began. I scrolled through picture after picture, reliving and enjoying the emotional highs of the previous night, until I came across one rather unflattering picture of myself. I was sitting on a couch, surrounded by friends so close, I considered them sisters. It was a wonderful, happy picture, that should have made me smile, but all I could see in it was my very round-looking face, my thick arms, my double chin, and a muffin top over my jeans.
I remember thinking, Am I really that fat? Is that what everyone sees when they look at me?
It was a devastating realization for a high school sophomore. I started spending hours in front of the mirror, pinching parts of myself I considered chubby, imagining how I’d be happy, if only I could lose those inches. I began obsessing over photographs of celebrities, writing down things “J-Lo’s butt,” or “Fergie’s abs,” setting goals as to how I wanted my body to look. And I wasn’t alone in my obsession.
Quickly, the topic of conversation between myself and my dance friends changed. We went from gossiping about boys and complaining about homework, to criticizing our own figures in pictures of ourselves that ended up on the internet. When Facebook came along, and tagging yourself and your friends in your photos became an option, the stakes became even higher. The pressure was suddenly on to look nothing less than camera-ready, every time we walked out the door.
The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt conducted a study of the correlation between Facebook and the dissatisfaction its users feel with their bodies. The results were alarming, and in most instances, very sad.
As Facebook feeds fill with pictures of female friends in cute bikinis, brags of, “Ran eight miles this morning. Feeling awesome today!” and gripes of, “I’ve gotta lose this baby weight…the diet starts tomorrow!” it’s hard to avoid the bad body image triggers, and with the ability to tag yourself and your friends in any status or photo, at any location, it’s even harder not to compare yourself to those you’re tagged with.
I found a little relief from this pressure after my son was born in 2010. Suddenly, there was someone in my life who needed my careful attention more than the love handles and thick thighs I had been so preoccupied with for the last five years. That’s absolutely not to say that I don’t still compare myself to my friends who have never been pregnant and wish I could look like them in a bathing suit, but I do find I go a little easier on myself now that I’m a mother. Unfortunately, though, studies would suggest that I’m in the minority in my feeling, and that breaks my heart. The way we feel about ourselves shouldn’t be the result of endless friend-to-friend comparisons of pictures and status updates. Nobody should feel that, because her profile picture isn’t as impressive as her friend’s, that she is any less beautiful or desirable.
So how do we overcome this epidemic of unhealthy comparisons and self-criticism? Obviously Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to disable photo tagging just because it makes thousands of people feel bad about their bodies, and the general Facebook population isn’t going to stop the bikini photos, the fitness boasting, or the diet complaining. That means it falls to us, the users. We can choose to detach ourselves from social media entirely. We can hide updates from the worst photo and status offenders. But I’m a social media junkie, and a nosy one to boot, so neither of those options appeal to me. I’d like to think that if we overhaul of our way of thinking as it pertains to the Facebook-body image correlation, we can overcome the tremendous media- and self-imposed pressure to look or be perceived as better than our Facebook peers. Social media won’t change to make us feel better about ourselves, which is an ugly truth (no pun intended), but a truth nonetheless.
It’s time to change the way we think about our bodies. Ignore the pictures and forget the status updates, because you can’t control them. You can control the way you think, so repeat after me:
Healthy is beautiful. Strong is beautiful. Confident is beautiful. And forget Facebook, because I am beautiful.
I think this problem has been here anyway and facebook just brings it more to the surface. I mean, most social media sites are not helping in this particular battle. Just look at those sad, sad YouTube videos of girls asking if they’re fat. Sadly, we are all (in either big ways or small) media whores. We *like* having our names out there and our noteriety, whether it be big or small. Or maybe that’s just me (grin). But, the question is: how do we present ourselves, how do we handle our own issues on body?
I will be one of the first to bitch that I don’t like how I photograph, but, recently, knowing that I am “out there” and that my own daughters have access to whatever I put online, I’m trying to be more aware of my own tune. I posted a picture of myself at the theatre this weekend on my twitter page with the caption of “size 14 and proud” because I really felt like I looked good, even though I’m not a size 6. And we really should be celebrating like that. Because everyone is beautiful.
I want my kids to see that I can be proud of my size/shape/whatever because of who I am, not because I’m comparing myself to a celebrity, because honestly, I love the attention of being an online presence, but I want to do it in a way that my daughters can be proud of me, not inherit my insecurities.
I love this post, Kristen. Maybe if we all started to talk about and think about and post about ourselves as if we were speaking in the words of our best friend/sister/mother/daughter, we would all be able to be more proud of what beauty is there, instead of focusing on what we think isn’t.
Hope that wasn’t too rant-y.
I am an attention-whore, media-addicted, body-aware mom who can totally relate. But now that all those “I didn’t know that photo existed” pictures of me in high school are showing up on Facebook, I keep thinking to myself, “WHY did I ever think I was fat?”
I was never a “skinny girl” and my size 9/10 in my senior year in high school was criticized once by my dad when he found out that I weighed 140 lbs at only 5’3″. But Dad was a career Army man who lived by the BMI chart and daily P.T. and he got a little angry when I told him that I ran 10 miles a day with the x-country team and had a daily aerobic workout in school where I took dance class for P.E. and that short of lopping off a boob, there was no way I would ever weigh less than 140 lbs. But I could see the effect his words had on my mother and one of my sisters and to this day, they have very unhealthy ideas about body image that I’m seeing/hearing repeated by my 11 yr old niece. I am not sure that my sister is aware of it and I’m the last one on the planet she’ll tolerate criticizing her parenting skills. But I’d rather her quit talking to me for a few years and take a hard look/listen to my niece than to worry about what she’ll think and not say something. My own 12 yr old daughter criticizes her own thighs and butt size and I’m fighting my own battles with body image…while still reminding her that she is exactly where she should be and that she is healthy and an active girl and a whole-foods eater and this seems to calm her nerves….until the next t.v. show with “perfect people” comes on.
TKS, Kristen. This article is much needed and very appreciated.
Great insights, Kristen. And I think another commenter hit it right on its head: this issue has always been here but thanks to social media, it’s being brought to the light. I recently had a bout with “body-hating” after a picture of myself that a friend posted on Facebook. And really, like you said, social media isn’t the problem, but our thinking is. Love the mantra you included at the end of this post!
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