Body Image and Self Esteem

Magazines across the newspaper stands and actress’ throughout the media are telling girls how they “should look”. These images of skinny women send out messages that they have the “ideal body.” However, this is false. There are many different body types out there and each girl is beautiful in her own way.

Body image and self-esteem are social issues that I am passionate about because they have been things that I suffered with in the past. During my sophomore year of high school, I started to question my beauty. I thought that I was not pretty or skinny enough. I constantly compared myself to other people. I became a very unhappy person and started to fade away from my friends. I thought that losing weight would make me happy, so I started depriving myself of my favorite foods and exercising. Just losing a few pounds transformed into an obsession. I discovered how easy it was to lose weight and, at the time, I thought it was rewarding. So I started to lose more and more weight, thinking that being thin would make me beautiful and solve my self-esteem problems.

However, I was wrong. Losing weight hurt my self-esteem and happiness. I became so obsessed with being thin, that I started missing out on the more important things in life. I stopped hanging out with my friends and I spent countless amounts of time worrying about gaining weight.

As time passed I realized, that being thin didn’t make me happy and having the “perfect body” shouldn’t be the main focus of my life. I realized that I had so much more to offer the world and I should focus on my good qualities.
I still have days were my insecurities sneak back into my mind and try to tell me that I am not pretty enough or skinny enough. But I try and find the courage to dismiss those thoughts and tell myself that I am beautiful. I tell myself that outward appearance isn’t everything and if I could look past all that I could truly enjoy life more.

Now as I think about the way I was my sophomore year in high school, I get embarrassed. This post is very hard for me to write because I have been ashamed of my past and have tried to hide the truth from so many people. After some consideration and a lot of convincing, I decided to share my story to reach out to other people who have the same issues I dealt with. I want to tell those girls that they are not alone. I want them to know that taking those drastic measures to stay or get thin isn’t worth it. Once you reach your goal, you still won’t be able to find happiness. Happiness comes from within and cannot be found by looking a certain way. There is so much more to life than what you look like. I just wish I realized this five years ago.