Poking at Beauty

I’m not behind on the times or anything, I am in fact very tech savvy; I text flawlessly, type 78 wpm on a good day, Myspace, Facebook, and have recently signed my life away to Twitter. The thing is, however, that Xanga was my brand of heroin back when it was popular, it was my breath into another world, and my very favorite place to be and as it turns out, old habits do, indeed, die hard. So today, like so many other days in the past, I signed on to Xanga, just to see how my old buddies were faring. I was browsing through my friends list, clicking on random usernames and scrolling through their posts to see what people were up to when I came across a blog post entitled- “Bulimia is oh so very cruel” [best_littlegirl]; I clicked. The post was a beautifully written, slightly poetic look into the mind of a teenage girl struggling with bulimia. It talked as though bulimia was a real person, whispering and coaxing, intentionally trying to push one over the edge. As I said, it was beautiful, but I had to wonder- is it really the disorder itself that is whispering and coaxing, or is the whispering from more immediate surroundings?

Every day, teenage girls are faced and pressured into trying to live up to the standards that the media proclaims to be crucial to popularity and acceptance. Because of this, the imitation of celebrity fashion trends has become a necessity, especially in regards to the high school and college environments. The saddest part about this is that not only are girls being pressured into dressing a certain way, but in the process they are often being physically and emotionally damaging to themselves by believing and accepting the lies the world is feeding to them.

It’s tragic really, that many girls are so insecure about their bodies that they feel they have to go to extreme measures to be satisfied with themselves. No amount of poking and prodding will fix the “problems” they have been influenced to believe they have, so they take matter into their own hands. Sadly, as a collective people, with the environment that has been allowed to be set up, we grant and not so subtly encourage this very behavior.

She'll strip you of your dignity and leave you with nothing.
There's no fighting her, because she's way too strong. She
will kill you in the end, just like she's killing me.

It doesn’t have to be this way, just turn off the TV and take a look in the mirror, true beauty isn’t what you see on the outside, but should be defined by how much of your heart shines through. The most beautiful people I know don’t spend hours on their hair or blow millions on their clothes, the most beautiful people I know shine on the outside because of the heart they have on the inside.

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. ~Rabindrath Tagore