Category Archives: Body Image

It’s So Cliche [a guest post]

Today’s guest post [very first one ya’ll!!!!] is from Janna Hall of My Beautiful Catharsis and serves as reminder to all girls and women: stop being someone you’re not despite what the media is handing you daily and start being you! Because there’s no one else in this world that is better at being well…You! I couldn’t agree more! Around here at SGS we are constantly dissecting and beating those too present stereotypes to a pulp! Thanks to Janna for sharing her thoughts, inspiration and honesty! 

It’s So Cliché…but “Be yourself; everyone else is taken” is a mantra that we need to carry on throughout our life. As kids, we grow up wanting to be like the girls on TV. My best friend and I couldn’t sit through a show or a movie without shouting, “I’M HER!” every time the prettiest girl came on the screen. For us, it was Clueless.  From the moment Stacey Dash hops into Cher’s Jeep, we thought of every reason to ditch who we were and immediately wanted to look like, sound like, and be Dionne. Or the pink Power Ranger. Or Beyonce. Or in my best friend’s case, Britney. From a young age, we’re almost programmed to want to be everyone else, whether it’s a Disney princess, a pop icon, or the popular girl in school. It’s so wonderful to pretend, but what happens when we’re adults and realize that we’re actually not those women, nor will we ever be them? In the midst of our fantasies, we’ve grown to hate ourselves, not because of who we are, but because of who we aren’t. We aren’t those princesses. We aren’t those girls who, with one quick, flirty glance fall in love and live happily ever after with our Prince Charming. We aren’t those celebrities who have picture perfect bodies. We aren’t them. We are who we are. I am Janna. You are you. Somewhere down the path of pretending, we’ve placed more focus on the body we don’t have than our own reality. Somewhere down that path, we’ve snapped from fantasy land and traveled down the path of self-loathing. We’re obsessed with someone else’s beauty so much so that everything we see when we look in the mirror is repulsive. We’re so obsessed with someone else’s life that our own reality, no matter how fabulous it may be, seems worthless. We wander through life wanting to be someone else, while letting the person we were created to be wither away.

It saddens me to see people hate who they are. What’s the point? You will never be anyone but who you are, and to want anything but that is setting yourself up for disappointment. Society, nor a man, nor a celebrity, can or should make you feel like the person you are isn’t effing amazing. Because you are. And there’s no one quite like you.“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than you.”

Janna Hall

Janna Hall

Graduating in 2010 from James Madison University with a degree in English, Janna left her hometown of Richmond, Virginia and headed to New York City in search of something greater than herself. That “something,” she discovered, was the position of Editor for EvolutionaryPress Publishing, helping young writers fulfill their dreams of becoming a published author. A now 7-time published editor, Janna enjoys the thrill of making dreams come true, and continually seeks ways to reach others and make a lasting impact on lives—both young and old. After spending a summer volunteering with New York Cares helping young girls prepare for the upcoming school year, Janna realized how passionate she was about seeing young girls gain confidence in their ability to succeed in the classroom and decided to use her passion to help girls succeed in all aspects of their lives. Now, she works for Girl Scouts of the USA, running the social media channels and pushing the message of building girls of courage, confidence, and character.

Barbie Biology

::Singing:: “I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie worrrld, life in plastic, it’s fantastic!”
Except not.

As a little girl I owned many Barbie branded items, (who didn’t?) the multi-level “dream” house complete with pulley elevator, the battery-powered pink Jeep that I drove around the cul de sac collecting autumn leaves and rocks, naturally. I also owned shififtyfive multi-talented, career-driven Barbie dolls, who had drawers full of clothing for any and all occasions. I mean what if she wanted to roller skate in the park with her puppy and sister Skipper? A girl needs options!

However, being a kid I’m not sure I even realized how un-proportional the Barbie doll actually was compared to the human species because I was too busy using my imagination (yay, creativity!) and finding the matching minuscule plastic high heel in the air vent. Pesky things never stayed put.
Shoeless Barbies forever.

After I grew up and playtime was over I began to realize the trademark Barbie bod was no where near that of normal girls’ errr… humans’. Reality check: Barbie’s are the in-hand version of the digitally altered images we see on the glossy pages of magazines.
Refinery 29 put out an article with the most glorious graphics from Rehabs.com demonstrating the ridiculousness of the Barbie body, asking “Is the Barbie body possible?” The short answer: No. But read on for just how ridiculous.

Let’s start from the top down, yes? Yes.

A&F-ing It Up!

Sure Abercrombie and Fitch has faced scrutiny for its racy advertisements and parent backlash of the NSFS (not safe for school) tees. However, I still shopped there when I was a teen—around age 14. All of “those” surfer chic with a touch of prep-in-its-step brands were all the rage in high school. Its true! If you wore those brands or any “in brand” (see: PacSun) then you were stylish and on trend… and I guess “cool.”

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I grew out of these brands, literally, when I was a freshman in college. I knew it was time to abandon the brands when all I could find was the occasional sweater in a size large which, if I remember correctly equated to about a size small in most department stores. These popular brands no longer carried the sizes for my curves—curves, which by the way I was happy to have! ::twerks::

Then there was the hellish shopping experience. Between all the tweens geeking out at all the crude tees, the overly polluted stench in the air (aint no body needs to wear that much cologne), the heat, and the necessity to BYOHeadLamp to see what-the-what they were even selling. I was over shopping there and apparently so was A&F’s Jackassery of a CEO, Mike Jeffries, who is making headlines this week due to a Business Insider story  about how they don’t want XL females shopping at their stores because they aren’t “cool” or “beautiful.”

Enter stage right: My get fired up pissed off WRITE-IN-ALL-CAPS-ABOUT-HOW-ABSURD-THIS- (gary busey doppelganger) MAN-IS Thoughts. GAH, LOUD NOISES. But first a statement from the CEO who has the gonads to actually run a company based on these bullying principles.

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either,” Jeffries told Salon in an interview in 2006.

Want to know why Jeffries’ crazypants are on a bit too tight for today’s standards?, thought you might, click to continue reading

Fact: You Are Beautiful

Dove does it again. With only 4% of women around the world thinking they are beautiful I believe this video did its job to promote positive body image and prevent self-hate.
This video tugs at the heart strings and shows that we are our toughest critiques.

Dove took a trained FBI forensic artist to sketch portraits of the women, who were hidden behind a curtain, based on their own descriptions of their facial features. The second part of the experiment was to have others describe those same women and compare the portraits side-by-side. The differences were alarming. Often the portrait where the woman described herself was darker in shading, had poor or closed off posture, and was older than the actual woman in real life. The portraits where others described the woman were lighter and vibrant, younger, and in my opinion more accurate of the actual woman.
Now I want Dove to do this campaign with younger girls around five or six years-old, super models and shoot why not go for it all and do this experiment with men?
Today I want each of you reading this (yes, you too guys) to stop the self-hate and start to realize that you are beautiful. Let’s beat the statistic. Positive thinking is powerful and how you view yourself affects how others, in all aspects of your life, view you. So make the promise to yourself because you deserve it, because you are beautiful, because you are you!
Repeat after me: I am beautiful!
I can’t hear you!: I AM BEAUTIFUL.
Oh yes, yes you are! Git it girl!

The Bigger the ‘Thigh Gap’ the Bigger Your Popularity Status

Often the Thigh Gap is camouflaged to being motivation for exercise and fitness. Image from the Thigh Gap Tumblr

Often the Thigh Gap is camouflaged to being motivation for exercise and fitness. Image from the Thigh Gap Tumblr

OK so the first I heard of this new body image obsession was on The Kane Show, the morning radio show I listen to make my hour or longer commute bearable. You should listen. The DJs are an entertaining bunch.

So what the hell is a “Thigh Gap?”

According to the NJ high school juniors interviewed by GMA reporter JuJu Chang it’s when you’re standing with your feet and knees together and there is a space between your thighs that is viewed as the “ideal body shape.” Yup don’t have one, not sure I ever did.

Why is this a new and dangerous obsession? Well besides that fact that it’s predominately runway or severely photoshopped models that sport this new “trend,” it’s damn near impossible to achieve this “gap.” Teen psychologist Barbara Greenburg called it an “unattainable goal.”  Agreed. Personally the closest I ever got to a “gap” was between my teeth during my adolescences for which slllooowwwly corrected, we’re talking 5 years people, by braces due to my over bite and a whole mess of other dental problems. Thanks genetics.

No really, genetics plays a huge role in how we’re built. I like to call it the 50/50. Half is genetics and half is the lifestyle we lead, which means what we eat, how often we exercise and being overall happy campers. Also side note these genetics mean some of these images on Tumblr and walking up and down a runway have bow’d legs which can look just like a Thigh Gap.

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