The strive to be perfect

The fear of rejection and abnormality has led me to negatively view myself many times in my teenage years. Growing up I was extremely athletic, I played about every sport known to man and was always active. As my mom says I came out of the womb with rock solid legs and as ideal as that may seem it has led me to some very low moments. When you are in middle school and even high school you do not want to be looked at as a strong girl instead you want to be seen as a fun loving girly girl. Instead people viewed me as tough and strong and that was everything I did not want to be. I would try and eat healthy in hopes that my legs would get "smaller" little did I know when you are training for sports like I was there was no way for me to lose the size of my legs because it was pure muscle. I wanted to be the skinny girl that one that had toothpick legs not the athletic one. 

It amazes me how already in the few years I have been out of middle school the ideal body is changing. Just like the slide show says the ideal body image is far from static. These days (at least for older girls) having muscle definition is something they strive for. And it is very funny because now that I am out of sports and now that I no longer train I work so hard to build the muscle I once hated. It is really sad actually, people work so hard to maintain and gain certain body types...but why? Why does it really matter if you are skinny, athletic, "pear shape" or curvy. I understand the importance of being healthy and I try and maintain a healthy life style but Americans strive so hard for commercialized beauty; something that is far from normal and artificially enhanced. The media created images are giving girls a negative outlook on their own bodies. Females and also males are going to drastic measures such as anorexia, bulemia, etc. in pursuit of these bodies. Out of every hundred THOUSAND people only 5 women actually look the way that models do on tv. What about the other 99,995 women? Why is it so important to advertisement to place value on the minority of women when all they are affecting is negative self images from others. I think that the media really needs to 'revamp' its commercials and it would affect the way that our society as a whole views beauty.