Adolescence By Day

Oh, that I looked like a model. Or even those pretty girls I see at Urban Outfitters or American Eagle. Tall, blonde, perfectly preportioned, skinny. Why do I feel this way? I've been told I'm pretty, hot, too thin even. You can see my hipbones and my ribs sometimes. I'm a size 0 in jeans. Why don't I believe anyone when they say that I'm beautiful and skinny and everything I want to be? Is it a side effect from years of dance in a non-dancer's body? Is it the depression? Is it the "cosmo culture"? Maybe it's all of those.

The thing is...it doesn't matter what caused it for us. The girls with the "problems." The ones who don't really "need" that meal, the ones who'll sigh over perfection we know we'll never achieve. We can look in the mirror for hours and never see ourselves as we are, for better or worse. I'm thirteen and I have a problem. The girls I know (and the girls I don't) who are like me have a problem. We don't care. We will keep doing this, keep harming ourselves with our disordered eating till we're skinny enough, pretty enough. And for us, that'll never happen. Because we'll never look like models or celebrities (even the ones who are deemed "ugly" by the gossip rags!).

For most girls, it's not that "bad." We aren't anorexics or bulemics, or at least not yet. This, this not-quite-eating disorder, can be almost worse. It's just as insidious, but you don't see the effects as much. A slight change in appetite, a marked interest in working out. But it's there. Inside our minds, worming it into out conciousness that we're not good enough.

I know that it's wrong for me to feel this way. I know that this image in my "head" won't happen, I know that I'm not going to reach that airbrushed perfection I see in magazines. I try to remind myself this every day. I try to remember that I'm a pretty cool person and that it honestly doesn't matter what I look because I'm a smart, talented, feminist, cool teenage girl. Sometimes I feel normal, sometimes I can look in the mirror without being disgusted. Then it just goes all down the drain. It doesn't matter to us girls what we think.

I've heard a theory that girls get eating disorders because they lack control on anything else. Honestly, who can blame them? For young women that are even a little aware of world events, it can be very overwhelming to see all the wrong going on and not be able to help. They can also be triggered (or at least exacerbated) by family situations that are less than perfect. Sometimes it feels as if we're lost in a world that doesn't care about our opinions, our voices, however loud we are. We cry out for help in any way we can, and this is one of them.

My point is this: watch the girls in your life. Raise them to be like Melissa, some of the women at Jezebel, the lovely feminists we see in our lives. Do all that you can to not let this happen to them. Oh, they'll have Seventeen and CosmoGIRL! to tell them that they're not lovely enough. Let them have their mags and makeup and fashion, but teach them to take it with a grain of salt. Give them Full-Frontal Feminism and bring them up on Shakesville. Let them have blogs and talk to them about important things. Value their opinion as individuals with voices. Make sure they know you can talk to them about everything. Above all, if they need help (whether it's a therapist or a slurpee) please it to them. Give them strength to pass on to the next generation, so they don't end up like this one, skinny as hell and with no self-image to speak of.