#3. ALONG CAME TWIGGY
At age sixteen, Twiggy became the first prominent teenage model. She was named “The Face of 1966” by the Daily Express and voted British Woman of the Year. At 5’6’’, Twiggy weighed 91 pounds at the height of her modeling career.
Thinness became an obsession for millions of girls worldwide.When my mother was pregnant with my little brother, I was about nine years old and some of the ladies from our church put together a baby shower. We were in our living room, and for some strange reason everyone was stepping on the scale and weighing themselves. By then I had a younger sister, who was very skinny, as was my older brother and sister. My brother would eat a whole sleeve of Oreos and drink milkshakes and never gain weight.
I weighed in that day at 123 pounds. To a nine year old, the numbers on the scale are meaningless until someone points out how your number compares to someone else’s number. That was the first time I was aware of my weight and that dreaded number on the scale had put me in the ‘fat’ category.
The scale became my enemy. It had the power to produce feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing. It even had the power to make me cry on more than one occasion. The struggle with my weight became a struggle with my self image. When I was successful at losing weight, I was being “good,” and when the weight came back, as it always did, I was “bad.” This went on for years, like an emotional roller coaster ride.
Beauty Redefined
Dangerous Illusions
The illusion of physical perfection in media images can be very damaging, especially to adolescents.The ten highest paid models of 2013 average 5′ 10″ tall and 121 pounds. They are from Brazil, South Africa, The Netherlands, USA, China, Australia and Puerto Rico. They are recruited from the far corners of the globe, probably because every country has only eight to ten women who fit the mold they have created. What about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do when the fashions in the stores look better on the hangers than on us?
We measure ourselves against people who, in some cases, aren’t even real. Photos are manipulated to create an ideal that is not humanly possible for most of us to achieve.
Today, magazines and online media openly endorse and defend the use of digital manipulation, which digitally slims women’s bodies and even exaggerates or adds a “thigh gap.” What, I ask myself, is a “thigh gap?” Those are two words I would never have put together. Thigh rubbing or thigh chafing perhaps, but a gap?
Digital Manipulation
The website Beauty Redefined has a feature called The Photoshop Phoniness: Hall of Shame Gallery. It shows magazine covers where photos have been digitally manipulated to make the already thin actresses and singers fit the mold of the fashion models mentioned above. These women, who have already achieved huge success in their fields, were somehow not quite magazine cover worthy without a bit of digital magic.
Kate Winslet spoke out about her picture on the Jan. ’03 British GQ cover. The article said, “Acclaimed actress Kate Winslet is notoriously beautiful and curvaceous, so it’s not surprising men’s magazine GQ would want to include her on their cover. What IS surprising is that they removed her curves entirely, leaving extremely thin legs that bear no resemblance to her own and a rightfully upset actress. She told Britain’s GMTV, ‘I don’t want people to think I was a hypocrite and had suddenly gone and lost 30 pounds, which is something I would never do, and more importantly, I don’t want to look like that! … They made my legs look quite a bit thinner. They also made me look about 6 feet tall, which I’m not – I’m 5 foot, 6 inches.’”
It's Fake News, People!
Unrealistic images of women with no freckles, no wrinkles, and sometimes no pores at all, are creating the illusion of beauty which is not actually attainable. Their objective is to sell the product that will magically make you attractive and thereby make you loved, successful and happy. It’s fake news, people! They are lies, and very powerful lies.Are your customers raving about you on social media? Share their great stories to help turn potential customers into loyal ones.
Hindsight Is 20/20
Shortly after high school, my yearbook was lost in a fire, so when I attended my 30 year high school reunion, they gave me one from a box that someone had saved all those years. When I opened that book, and found some photos of myself, I was astonished. I could not believe how great I looked, and how skinny! All those years I had such a negative self image. I weighed about 135 during high school, but since both of my sisters weighed right around 100 pounds, I considered myself 35 pounds overweight. Comparison truly is the death of joy!
Comparing myself now to those photos in the yearbook, I certainly wouldn’t mind being ‘fat’ like that today. But with the passing of the years and childbirth and menopause, my two Twiggy sisters and I are a bit more even now, and I have actually been the skinniest of the three of us, even if only for a short time.
I tell people that I lost forty pounds last year, which is true. The problem is that it was the same four pounds I lost ten times! But, being on a diet since the age of twelve is probably a good thing because I would weigh about 600 pounds by now if I hadn’t been.
With age comes wisdom, and it is a wise person who realizes that skinny doesn’t look as attractive on old people. In fact, many elderly people look gaunt and a bit like a skeleton if they don’t have some fat on their bones.
Now I see weight loss more as a desire for comfort, such as being able to walk up stairs without getting out of breath, or being able to reach my feet to tie my shoes.
I no longer allow the number on the scale to dictate my mood or my value as a person. Eating in a healthy manner is my goal because I feel better when I eat better. Eating well is a lifelong discipline.