When I was thirteen years old, I was under the impression that the girls I saw on Disney Channel were all the pinnacle of beauty. They always had perfect hair, glowing skin, and teeny waists. I, like so any other little girls, wanted so desparately to look like them. I bought clothes that they wore, I would try to talk like them, and I wondered why I never really looked as pretty as them. I had no idea they sat in hair and makeup for hours when they posed for magazines. I thought that their hair just grew better than mine and that they never got pimples. I was crushed when I started to get red, angry looking zits because to me that meant I was ugly. I hated looking at myself and not seeing a flat, thin stomach. I was convinced that weighing anything over 115 was overweight because the internet cites never listed any of those girls heavier than 110 lbs.
At the time I was extremely active in swimming. I was healthy and thriving as any normal human being should be, but still I would go home and do sit ups praying that the little bit of cushion over my middrift would disappear. When I got a pimple, I would walk around trying to keep something infront of it so no one would notice it.
It took me a long time and a lot of soul searching to realize that if I lost that tiny bit of belly fat, I wouldn't menstruate like normal and that literally everyone gets pimples. Then I found out that those girls on Disney Channel were all miserable and some anorexic. I started seeing women like America Ferrara talk about curves and loving your whole body for what it is and somehow along the lines, I really began to believe I was beautiful the way I was.
Are there still days when I step on a scale and wince at 138 lbs flashing at me? Yes, of course. It is a healing processes that I don't think enough girls get a chance to do and unfortunately I don't think that the biggest perpatrators are done. Just recently I had a Disney TV show on and I found myself looking at the girls and feeling those same insecure and self conscious feelings about my body. The shows still make the larger girl characters weird and awkward with unflattering personalities. And it's sad that they still haven't gotten the message. It's sad that there is so much emphasis put on looking good.
You rarely hear people ask you how you feel about how you look. I wish that every person had the opportunity to say they love how it feels to look in the mirror and see themselves. Their unadulterated face and their well respected bodies that look the way that they do and that it's okay that it is different than that girl from Seventeen Magazine. There is something to be said about those lazy days on the couch wearing sweatpants, with a face full of acne and a frizzy ball of hair. If on those days, you can look yourself in the front-facing camera of your iphone and feel good, you're doing something right.
