Lady GaGa - A Body Revolution

As you may have noticed I really like to focus on how society can effect the way you look upon your body. This will be my third post about this. I do this because I think it is really important to focus on something like this.

About a week ago world known pop-star Lady Gaga put focus on what we all love and hate: The body. She did this with her Body Revolution 2013. All over the world Little Monsters have been uploading pictures of their bodies and told their story on littlemonsters.com.
Lady Gaga started the Body Revolution 2013 by making a new profile called: A Body Revolution 2013. The first picture that was uploaded was a picture of Gaga herself with the title: "Bulimia and anorexia since I was 15" This picture was followed by three pictures which titles put together with the first made the sentence: "Bulimia and anorexia since I was 15, but today I join the BODY REVOLUTION to inspire bravery and BREED some m$therf*cking COMPASSION"
By uploading these pictures Lady Gaga started the body revolution and since then Little Monsters around the world has been uploading pictures of what society seems to call their 'flaws'. These flaws are not only things like bulimia or anorexia caused by nasty comments or things like that. It is also 'flaws' such as a missing arm or missing legs. These are things we know about, but would rather not look upon when we're out.
I use these quotation signs around the word flaw, because for me this is not a flaw. This is who they are and by standing up they are showing us that they are brave. They are not something to be brushed under the carpet or to be stared at when out. They are just like everybody else!
We all have something we don't like about our body. Be it our weight or something else. What we need to be is brave enough to accept ourself as we are: We're all beautiful no matter how we look.
Our body is our temple. We need to look after it, but we also need to love it. If we cannot love ourselves for who we are then we cannot love others for who they are.
I love the fact that so many Little Monsters are brave enough to upload these pictures for the Body Revolution and tell their story. Not only will it make people realize what is wrong with our society, but it will also let those who are not brave enough yet know that they are not alone. Being alone with this self-hatred is the worst thing anyone could be. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. There are people out there who knows what you're going through and can talk to you.

Now, I've clearly stated that I would try to do this as anonymously as possible, but I will talk about this quite personal fact about myself: When I was younger I used to only eat one meal a day. This meal was dinner and it would never be very much. I've always been underweight and this just made it worse. I know I was already known for not wearing the same clothes as the other girls and I was probably also known as the girl who never ate. I really didn't care what they said behind my back, but whenever the girls would start saying things directly to me it hurt. My mum was really worried about me, because I barely ate and I still meant that my thighs could be thinner and things like that. She took me to the doctor, but as I didn't throw up when I'd eaten or completely starve myself and everything else seemed to be okay, then he could only tell me to eat more.
Now I've started eating two times a day. I'm still working on eating breakfast, which is the hardest meal for me. But I have never been on a scale for years, and I probably never will again. I know I have gained weight and I can live with that fact.. As long as I will not have to see the number of said weight. If I see the number I fear I will stop eating again. I'm still skinny and I do not have the perfect body with out scars that tells a story, but I can accept that.

So wether you're a Little Monster or not: Join the Body Revolution and let people know they're not alone and that they can love their body like everybody else.

Teenage beauty

Beauty.
If you look up the word beauty in a dictionary there will probably be lots of definitions. But the one I immediately noticed was: "A very attractive and well-formed woman."
Can anyone give a definition of that? No. What is attractive to one person may be unattractive to another. But be as that may all women strive to be beautiful - to be an attractive and well-formed woman. But what will people do to reach their goal? More importantly what does this fight for beauty and perfection do to our society?

What made me think about all of this was Gok Wan's Body Confidence Class which you can see above. In fact I've thought about this many times. But I've never imagined it  was this bad.
The magazines and the movie makers make a perfect poster woman and man. They take the flaws on their bodies and photoshop them. As Gok Wan shows the girls in the clip Keira Knightly is a good example of it. This makes the girls think that they need big breasts and a thin as a stick body.
But is it only the girls' and women's thoughts of how the body of a woman should look like? No. I believe that it also affects the way boys and men look at the body of a woman. They expect a girl to be skinny, have big breasts and look like Keira Knightly, Megan Fox and so on.
The way magazines and movies portrait the women and the expectations of how to look from the men, makes a young girl strive even more to look like the women she sees on the cover of Vogue, Elle and what else magazines she might read. But we are not all born with a super skinny body. And even those who are strive to be even skinnier. How many girls does not struggle with eating disorders because she feels fat even though she's actually underweight?
All of these expectations have consequences. Like self-harm, eating disorders, bad confidence and the list goes on. But as can be seen in the clip it is not only girls who suffers under these expectations. It's also the boys. They have a lot to live up to. The men on adverts and movies has six-packs and big muscles and this is what the girls want. So just like the girls they strive to achieve the perfect, the ideal body.
As an example for both I can use some incidents from my every day life. My sister goes around saying she's fat and how she wishes her thighs were thinner. All because of what she sees in the television and in the magazines. She's nowhere near fat! In fact she is underweight. I try and try to make her understand that she's perfect the way she is, but who wants to hear that from someone who once said the same thing?
As for the boys. I overheard some girls, who had just seen the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, say that they did not think Daniel Radcliffe was 'hot' because he is 'chubby.' I thought about it for a second and couldn't say I thought the same. I didn't think more about it before I talked to a friend about it. She said: "They only say he's chubby because he doesn't have a six-pack! And Why is it that guys need to have a six-pack?! Those who does not have a six-pack but muscles on their arms and legs.. They are the hot guys!" And I could only agree.

Now. Sorry for the long entry but now my question to all of you reading this is: Do you think that all of this poster perfect body ruins the way people look at their body?