The real reason people are weight-obsessed.

[Razzle]

The media is strongly to blame

We're shown these size 0 girls and these absolutely ripped adonis men and we are told "this is ideal". However, that is all we are told.

We are NOT told that it takes an extreme lifestyle to get like that. Teenagers (who are most vulnerable to these messages of "you are not good enough") don't learn that these people are payed to look like that, that they don't have real lives, and that they eat rabbit food and spend 6 days a week in the gym to look the way they look. If they're rich, they can also go under the knife. If there was more education that it takes such time, commitment and money to look like these celebrities and models, I think there would be a lot less body image issues in society. Coming to that realisation allows you to be so much more comfortable in your own body, because it allows you to feel normal.

But I don't want to look exactly like the ideal - thin, yes, but not what's the most conventionally attractive. That would make me look too threatening, too competitive, too strong. It makes sense that most people want to look stronger, and more threatening to the same sex, but that's not how I want others to see me, and more importantly, it's not how I want to see myself in the mirror, because it's not how I feel. I want my body to reflect my self-concept, I want congruence. 

For me that means looking gentle and delicate AS WELL as looking competent, serious, self-disciplined and self-restrained, and god I hate to say it, but "noble". There's something noble and even spiritual to me about not being bothered about or tempted by food. (I do have a good sense of humour and come across as cheerful and easygoing, if a bit nervous, in real life I should point out - I'm not as boring and dour as I'm making myself sound, haha.) I think that's what most people find appealing about thinness in our Western culture that prizes self-discipline, self-regulation, not being needy or clingy, self-reliance and hard work. I saw a study that suggested cultures that don't value those things as highly are the ones that don't prize thinness. So I think our cultural values of self-discipline and the like are what drive our idealisation of thin bodies for women and muscular bodies for men, and the media simply REFLECTS those ideals that are already there. They came organically from society and filtered up to the media, not down from it. 

I want to look self-disciplined and efficient because I was not seen that way as a child and I always wanted to be that way, it felt like the way I was always meant to be. Now my mental health is better I am that way but it's a fragile self-perception that I have to protect and reinforce, and what I see in the mirror is just another way to do that. I don't want to look as strong and intimidating as the average underwear model does but I do want to look as self-disciplined as they do.