Take a look at the cover of any girls', sports, luxury, lifestyle or women's magazine, with a female on the cover. Most likely, that the girl would be size zero, if not size insert-a-negative-number-here. The entire world seems to be obsessed with this skinny look, which fashion magazines and media celebrates, wrongly, as 'the ideal' size. This includes teen girls' magazines, like teen vogue, girl's life, and most other magazines, that claim that it's their motto to 'boost' the teens 'self-esteem', while in real life they are actually pressurizing young girls by setting an ideal, a must-reach goal of an emaciated figure that is very hard, and even unhealthy, to attain. Most cliques in schools, following media's ravings, also define this skinniness as 'perfection'. The readership of these teen magazines mostly consists of ordinary, differently shaped teens, not real, haute bikini-bodied models, and yet this superficial image is what is worshipped like a religion.
Promotion of skinny culture indirectly encourages eating disorders, boosting anxiety, and prematurely placing too much emphasis on little nine and ten year olds already making them beauty conscious, and so, robbing them of a carefree childhood.
Following this crazy trend, many desperately try to shed off pounds the quick way-say, by starving themselves (then bingeing later), having reconstructive, weight loss drugs and pound shedding surgeries or by other means, which usually don't work out. Either that or they sink into a trench of depression, stressing and sulking about their flabbiness, and about not being underweight. Sudden, self-made skimpy diet plans, are adopted as a result, to put off all weight abruptly. But, acute diet plans to cut down skin, can severely damage our bones, putting us in danger of getting osteoporosis (a chronic condition where the bones become weak and brittle).
Try entering 'size' in Google search. Before you know it, you will already by debilitated by a whole load of stuff relating to size zero- diet, food, designers, models, clothes, cheats, and what not.
The real question is, is size zero actually 'perfect'? Not really. While it's one thing to be a naturally petite size zero while still eating all you want, is one thing, forcing this alien size into your body may well have the opposite effect. Moreover, the beauty of the body isn't necessarily defined by having no mass. No, curves beautify, muscles, and the right sort of fitness build strength and shape, and so do each person's natural physique. We all look, and are sized differently, to suit our natural persona well. The world would become too monotonous if everyone started puking out their food to make their bones protrude. It is ironical that while really poor children in the third world countries are dying of malnutrition, their much wealthier counterparts in developed regions are also starving of the same, just because they want to look undernourished.
Take a look at the aftermath of eating disorders. In early 2006, Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston, 21, died of anorexia and bulimia on the eve of a Paris photoshoot after living on a diet of apples and tomatoes. The death of Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos at the Uruguay Fashion Week in 2006 led to the ban on size zero girls parading at the Madrid fashion shows. Her father claimed that she had been fasting for days. The already skinny 22-year-old had been informed by her model agency that she could "make it big" if she lost a significant amount of weight. She collapsed died despite the efforts of an emergency team trying to resuscitate her.
We are ourselves to blame for this size zero mania. Why would the top designers and magazines so actively continue featuring and supplementing diets and tips for this trend if no person cared to follow it? It is because we are so avidly following and falling prey to this glossy trap, and are consciously or otherwise promoting it ourselves, that it is being heralded. If every one of us learns to love our own body the way it is, instead of yearning something that we don't have, the skinny frame would lose all its rage, and that in turn, could lead to hundreds of lives being saved. For even today, young girls are dying, of eating disorders and starvation to achieve what is foolishly branded desirable. It is up to each one of us to fight back this degrading culture. Size zero, is way too praised, and glittery, but it definitely is not gold
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