Perfection

It is impossible to turn on the television, read a magazine, or pay attention to popular culture and not be confronted with unrealistic and images of what constitutes female beauty. It becomes ingrained in how men look at women and how women look at themselves and other women.

It is not healthy, and more frequently than ever, this is what happens.

Food and eating eccentricities go with the territory now-a-days. I don't believe there are many teen females, at least in the United States, that have normal eating habits. Not when we are being bombarded with the perfect-looking models that have been photoshopped to within an inch of their lives and no longer hold much resemblance to real, live, human females and the beautiful individual flaws that make them who they are. Not when we are inundated with magazines and commercials that all sing the same message: you should be trying to lose at least 10lbs in the next two weeks and if you aren't, why not, and here is the way you should be eating. But, when those eccentricities turn into disorders, that is when you have a problem.

So, why would I take my daughter to a documentary about women that have eating disorders when she clearly is not in that demographic? Because I want her to understand where I came from. I want her to understand those girls at school that have stepped over the line. I want her to take her health and life seriously. And because life is a series of judgments and comparisons on our part, I want her to see where she is succeeding. My hope is that she gets more confidence realizing that almost all women look in the mirror and see imperfections and that it doesn't take much to step over the line into a place that gets scary and where you lose your footing. I want her to take me seriously when I tell her she is beautiful and that I love her and that she should look in the mirror everyday and tell herself the same things.

This is what makes me cringe for my 7 month old daughter and my young nieces, when I think of the absurd, unrealistic, and unhealthy messages about body image that they receive daily from our popular culture.

This is what makes me want to tell them every day how beautiful they are. Will that be enough?

What do I do if it isn't?

Perfection