So I’ve found myself mentally retreating a little these last few weeks as I’ve been thinking about the Curvy is Beautiful mantra and what it is I’ve been trying to achieve with it. It was an article I read recently about the death of a 19 yr old girl who lost her battle with anorexia that has compelled me to write today.

Bethany Wallace was a young and beautiful up coming teenage model who had the world at her feet. A cover model since the age of 12, the world of fashion and the weight stigma attached to it was no secret to this beauty who had battled an eating disorder since she was 16. Weighing just 44 kilos and with a BMI of 16.1, anorexia finally took its toll as her heart stopped and she died in her sleep aged 19 yrs.…what an incredible waste of life.

Believe it or not, there was a time when I could relate to that pain and longing to be thin. I remember being that age and thinking that the only and most important thing in life was to lose weight. I counted calories, took laxatives, took every diet pill you could possibly think of (some so bad they’re now banned in most countries) and I stuck my fingers down my throat every time I ate something with a calorie count greater than a celery stick.  It really sucked. If there’s one thing I hated more than anything it was the smell of my own stomach acid which was often the result of throwing up virtually nothing.  But I was a girl on a mission. I wanted to be thin and I wanted to be what I thought was beautiful.

It has taken years of that, years of yo-yo dieting, hating myself, putting myself down and years of trying to attain and look like something that I’m not before I realized that whilst I could keep trying to be a size 6, the reality was, I just wasn’t built that way. Thanks to my mother I had hips, boobs and a European ass that wasn’t going anywhere!  And for those that are wondering, yes it’s all still here. I am a curvy girl. Always have been, always will be.

It took a long time for me to accept that and it took a long time for me to realize that there is nothing wrong with me the way I am, because we are all beautiful in our own way and beauty comes in all different shapes and sizes.  Having said that, I don’t think beauty comes in a form that shows we are potentially unhealthy. It doesn’t come in a form that shows we are in pain whether that be physical, mental or emotional and it definitely doesn’t come in the form of an eating disorder.

Now I know that we often see celebrities and models in magazines who look like they are continually caught amongst the media pressure and social whirlwind of crash dieting and an obsession with being a size 0, but there is one thing that has gone that next step further and that is ‘thinspiration’ – the ever growing online websites and blogs promoting anorexia and/or being excessively thin.

And sure I get that everyone is entitled to an opinion on any topic, including that of being thin, but it just blows me away that there seems to be such a mass following of these sites. There are young women on these forums sharing tips and tricks on how to dangerously lose weight and talking about how beautiful it looks to have excessive protruding bones and gaps between their legs as they post up photos of sickly thin women they are striving to imitate. I have to ask – what the fuck has happened to society’s image of beauty?!  How and when did it become so badly distorted?!

I understand that mindset that many young women have in terms of wanting to lose weight, as I said above, I’ve been there myself years ago. However, whilst I was once upon a time a young girl wanting to be thinner, NOT ONCE did I ever look at a photo of an anorexic woman and think that was beautiful or think that was what I wanted to look like. If anything it was Marilyn Monroe’s figure that I wanted! I just don’t understand why anyone would want to purposely look like a skeleton?

And I don’t mean in any way to come across as ignorant or offensive to those that suffer with an eating disorder because obviously it is a disorder and those suffering it have a blurred vision when it comes to their sense of self and beauty. However, it’s those that don’t yet have eating disorders, who are actually perfectly healthy but for some reason have developed an obsession with wanting to lose weight because they think that skin and bones are beautiful, that concern me.

Believe it or not, there’s apparently a name for these people – they call them ‘wannarexic’ which basically is a person who doesn’t have anorexia but wants it. Now I don’t know maybe I’m missing something, but why on earth would anybody knowingly want to be and look anorexic?!

I see these absurd photos, quotes and comments on some of these ‘thinspiration’ sites and I don’t even know where to begin with trying to fathom the mindset behind these people’s thoughts. I literally sit there reading with a look of nothing but disbelief and a continual default gasp that comes as a result of what really couldn’t be summarized as anything other than a sickly twisted and distorted image of what makes a person beautiful.  The only thing I see when I stare at an image like the one below, is a woman who is vastly losing any beauty she once had along with her life and soul which unfortunately is probably sitting at the bottom of her toilet bowl…

Until next time
x