How Skinny Should a Girl Be According to the Fashion Industry?

The fashion industry projects a negative image of women to young girls by trying to make them think that to be pretty, a girl should be skinny.

Young girls in their teenage years are particularly impressionable because at this awkward stage of their lives, they are discovering who they are and creating an identity for themselves. Often, they are influenced by pictures of extremely thin models in fashion magazines. They think: "If people think that this skinny girl is pretty, I should become like her so that other people will like me too." Young girls think that by being thinner, all of their problems will disappear and that their life will be perfect.

I’ve had friends who did things that were really bad for their health in an attempt to lose weight quickly. I had a friend who had a perfectly normal weight for her height but still thought that she was overweight. That girl had subscriptions to six different fashion magazines and read them religiously every month. One day, she decided that she would fast three times a week and would eat absolutely nothing during these days. The rest of the week, her meals consisted of a few leaves of lettuce. As a couple of week went by, everyone noticed that she was becoming extremely thin and that her face was becoming paler every day. At one point, she literally looked like a ghost. She couldn’t concentrate in class and became obsessed with losing weight.

The thing that she didn’t realize was that being skinnier didn’t make her prettier, instead it was the opposite. The beautiful girl who was once full of energy and always happy was now a girl who looked extremely unhealthy and pale. She eventually got very sick and that’s when she realized that she didn’t need to be skinny to be pretty and she was beautiful just the way she was. You don’t need to go through all of that to realize that no matter what size you are, you are beautiful in your own way and that you don’t need the fashion industry to tell you who you should be.

By: Estelle K.