Body Perfect

Global researches across the youth spectrum have thrown up some interesting trends worldwide. The most glaring fact is that everybody wants to look perfect – read Thin. About sixty years ago, being ample was good and Marilyn Monroe ruled, but somewhere along the way the definition of god looks changed, and the idol image was Twiggy…leggy, thin and almost sexless, instead. It is really surprising, since the archetypal sexually attractive woman cannot be stick thin—it goes against all instincts of nature. A disproportionately large bosom balanced on a tiny waist and supported by pencil thin never ending legs is almost (if not more), impossible for nature to achieve. And I doubt if too many plastic surgeons could also make it happen. The human body cannot balance such abnormalities for too long. Bust silicone sacks are a testimony to a surgeon’s ability to play GOD… permanently.

The result of this obsession with thinness has manifested itself with a physiological disorder that has gained epidemic proportions across the developed world, and alarming rates of exposure even in the developing countries. With Barbie as their ideal figure, adolescent girls are taking extreme steps to `fit in" and harming their body chemistry as well as hormonal health for the rest of their lives, maybe even posing a danger for the health of future generations…for sick mothers can give birth only to sick children. Anorexic young girls can have various physical problems like diminished menstruation, or even absent ovulation, rendering them unable to have children at all. But then, at 15 who is bothered about having babies??

Researches suggest that almost 1 % of the world adolescent female population is suffering from anorexia - the technical term for willful starving to stay thin. In this process, some are even starving themselves to death!! The wishful thinking starts young, even pre-pubescent and schoolgirls not yet in middle school are now conscious of their vital statistics…probably no-one has told them that they are still growing, and any damage to their growth process will result in grave difficulties later on in life. In fact this is what should set the alarm bells of our medical authorities ringing, more than half of teenage girls (across the globe) are , or think they should be thinner, almost all agree thin is beautiful and ultimately, three out of every hundred girls in the age group 8-14 end up with serious eating disorders like anorexia. To look like their favorite celebrity, anything goes (some of these celebrities are themselves anorexic, setting at best an inhuman example).

Where does it all start? With the toys our sexist society gives to the children. Guns and tanks are for little boys , they can well make their fantasies come true in today’s violent world, since violence will not go out of fashion in a couple of decades. But little girls get impossible Barbie’s … to pet, fuss, dress and emulate. The Barbie is a fantasy, her statistics are definitely not human, but then, whoever said anything about the real world? While the average woman will grow to be 5 feet four inches tall, weigh between 60 and 70 kgs as an adult and wear a dress size 12, a Barbie is all of six feel tall, weighs only about 50 kilograms and still manages to slither into a dress size 4. What else are dreams made of??? Most of the kids who are caught in this trap do not even know that images of their idol beauty are electronically altered in most cases, airbrushed, elongated...generally tampered with to remove all flaws. And he Barbie is at best a creation out of a plastic mould….

Anorexia or its sister ailment, Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) are bad news for the youth population. In the US alone, BDD is found to attack almost 2 percent of the people, which is a matter of concern for a non-pathologic disease, and shows up a sick mind rather than a sick body. Sufferers of BDD are painfully aware of every bodily blemish. Their behavior is irrational and impractical, often leading to excessive dieting, steroid abuse, unnecessary plastic surgery, and even suicide. The danger lies in the fact that for anorexia or BDD, a very large number of sufferers may never even report to clinics, because they do not think they need help, and the ailment may be much more widespread than statistics tell us. Mental health care providers can evaluate a person’s behavior and diagnosis BDD but then, which teenager thinks she needs a shrink when all she is doing is spending sleepless nights over her next zit! This inability to face up to situations is the beginning of trouble.

Who gets these young women to think this way? The question should be rephrased, who can get these young women to stop thinking this way? Their excessive concern about appearance, their total involvement in every gram of fat in their body, every blemished pore on their skin and every un-toned muscle…who gets them to become so obsessive about their appearance? The answer lies in two directions. To begin with, the sense of self worth is cultivated (or not cultivated) within the family. A child of looks- obsessed parents is hardly likely to be comfortable with the way she looks. On the other hand, a child from a stable family, that places more emphasis on values, work and career development, will hardly have time for such nonsense. Yes, looks do matter and it is important to be well groomed, but obsessive behavior is taking the fad a bit too far.

For every parent with teen children, it should be a big concern, but then again, it has an amazingly simple solution, of course, in the form of prevention. A healthy, wholesome upbringing will not let these kinds of disorders enter the young, insecure mind. The peer group pressure will not be able to harm a child’s mind when she has ample emotional support from her family and confidence in herself. The first step, as usual, is from her home. Then, there are clinics and counsellors, but the damage is most often, already done. Once the growth process of an adolescent, pre-puberty body is retarded due to undernourishment or malnutrition, it is difficult to turn the clock back. Adults have to act fast, before entire generations of pubescent and pre-pubescent end up harming themselves, and a whole section of the society.