A love letter.
TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains sensitive topics that could potentially affect the reader.
​
Dear 15-year-old me,
You’ve just spent all morning staring at your reflection in the mirror, and now, you’ve caught yourself muttering your thoughts aloud. You may be insecure because you think your body isn’t proportional, your stomach has a grotesque bulge, or you’ve noticed the stretch marks on your thighs. You don’t believe when people say you’re beautiful because you think they’re lying. I’d give the world for you to stop beating yourself up for looking the way you do because trust me, the media is to blame, not you. The media makes us feel pressured into reaching for disgustingly unachievable body standards.
I don’t think you realise this, but the monstrous mass media has manipulated individuals of all genders and ages, shaping all our lives ever since the 1920’s. As women, our inner voices are poisonous enough, but only we know how arduous and horrific it is to walk down the street and try to avert our eyes from the fictitious advertisements circling you. As we stare at the billboards that hiss and gnash for our attention, we are constantly informed that we’re not good enough in our own skin. We see buses pass by with a sticker of a model plastered over it that hauls our self-esteem around the city and continues to crush it. Flipping through the pages of a magazine, switching through the TV channels or binge-watching movies, the hypnotic images of models who’re alarmingly skinny, tall, and tanned haunt us. It causes us to grow green, filled with envy and curses our perception of ourselves to be set in stone with no way out, inching us closer to body dysmorphia. It unquestionably makes our mind an active battlefield with us going to war with our own bodies.
From childhood, we’ve ineluctably been exposed to the media who bullies and shames us for looking the way we do, and that’s why we lose perspective of who we are at such a young, vulnerable age. An average woman’s bust size is about 34 inches and a waist that’s double of a Barbie’s of 18 inches. It’s shocking, isn’t it? We can lift our heads up and walk around unlike her, yet we all endeavor to see the ‘perfection’ of a doll in our reflection. But let’s remind ourselves that she’s only plastic. Even if we’ve outgrown dolls, there is no escape from the psychological plastic demon we’re up against.
Along with millions of other girls, you have similar definitions of “beauty” and “perfection,” which only serve as categories you exclude yourself from because your body isn’t naturally airbrushed or photoshopped. You compare yourself to models with clear skin and no stretch marks, putting yourself at the risk of developing an eating disorder. Dove’s body Image research discovered that looking at magazines for only 60 minutes lowered self-esteem in over 80% of girls due to our exposure to “perfection”. If 60 minutes can make you feel that miserable, being exposed to it for years would make us victims of the Mass Media’s cut-throat psychological manipulation.
You need to realize that with only 12% of the 3.8 billion women in the world fit the “ideal body” type, it's wildly absurd to loathe yourself for not looking the same as those in the 12%. When you decide to go under the knife, remember, you’re at war with your own body and are acting only because the media surreptitiously impels you to do so.
How do they do this, you ask? The mass media, which flagrantly objectifies your body,hinders our connections with ourselves and the world around us, exposes you to products and models who are powerful enough to turn your admiration into desperation. They make you feel invaluable and anxious- making you hide with no shield from all of the offensive words, allowing yourself to get attacked. The moment you feel attacked, you’re allowing the mass media to steer your life, and you go down your first spiral at a juvenile age because of that vicious oppression. The media implants the notions of beauty in your mind and cruelly makes you think it’s your idea to think that way, so you see yourself as someone who takes too much space in this world, and you take extreme measures to fit in.
These illusions cause you to restrict your exposure to protect yourself; it may seem pathetic, but little do they know how hard it is to avoid any form of media since it’s everywhere you go. No matter how much you veer away from it, the burdening media is going to come back around since it’s such a vital source of information. You don’t voluntarily choose to lower your self-esteem, but the media makes us a victim of the mass destruction of our sense of beauty.
We have been lied to, we have been negatively influenced and we have been crushed. This endlessly traumatising media continues to profit off self-hate while your body becomes a victim to your ignorance. I hope you wake up tomorrow appreciating the instrument of punishment that you attempted to starve, abuse and abandon. I hope you wake up appreciating your curves, your hair, and your uniqueness. I hope every morning begins with less criticism and more of finding comfort and cherishment in your reflection and growing body.
I hope you learn to love yourself at an earlier stage than I did.
Love,
Your much, much older self.