Fat, thin, flabby, toned – how we feel about our bodies can be a painful daily concern. In these days of size zero madness how is a girl to hang on to a well-adjusted healthy body image?
As the debate reignites over whether London Fashion Week should ban models under a certain weight and columnists lash out at women dieting as silly, while others proudly proclaim they are obsessed with being thin it seems that this age old issue just will not sit quietly by the sidelines.
With today’s hammering home of prescribed beauty through the media, insatiable demand for paparazzi shots of celebs looking over or under-weight it’s little surprise that the majority of women have issues with their body weight and/or shape. While some women are candidly honest about their ideal body image and how they’d like to attain it, whether through dieting, exercising, plastic surgery there are numerous women who experience anxiety over their body shape, size and weight but feel silly for mentioning it.
Even the most well-adjusted, secure in their self-image women will be forgiven for feeling less than perfect in the current climate. And even more worryingly is the number of women in their twenties and thirties whose anxieties have developed into eating disorders. Feeling put out because you don’t have a body like Gisele, despite a healthy diet and regular exercise, is one thing but becoming obsessive and self-destructive about eating and exercising is another. And what’s concerning is how some women may be deluding themselves over their obsession with food, dieting and exercising.
Over the next few weeks we’d like to share experiences of problems with self-image, dieting, exercising and eating disorders to show the myriad of issues that do exist among normal women and the complexities that have evolved in our unique current climate of celebrity size zero, media madness, and notions of beauty, glamour and success.
If you have an experience relating to the weight debate you’d like to share (anonymously if you prefer) please email editor@marmaladya.com or call 020 7834 0330 and ask to speak to Julia.
