Body Peace Treaty

Seventeen magazine has taken a giant step forward in dealing with the problems faced by teenagers today regarding body image through their Body Peace Project. It is reported that 91% of young girls feel anxiety when they simply look in the mirror, so Seventeen challenges girls to sign the Body Peace Treaty and declare themselves free of unrealistic expectations, and to begin loving their own bodies.

But there is something missing from the treaty, which puts the emphasis on how one should deal with thoughts and feelings in order to develop a positive outlook. Aside from stressing sensible eating and exercise, there is no concrete suggestion for confronting these problems with action. It's one thing for a girl to develop a healthy mindset about the way she looks, and it's another for her to put on a bikini and go to the beach. Seventeen should be encouraging girls to get out of their shells and have some fun that allows them to confront their phobias head-on. If someone is afraid of flying, the only real cure is to get in an airplane and deal with it. It's not enough to merely train the mind, the body must be trained, too.

One of the pledges in the treaty reads as follows: "Remind myself that what you see isn't always what you get on TV and in ads — it takes a lot of airbrushing, dieting, money, and work to look like that." I know that they mean well, but statements like these don't help the problem. The insinuation is that airbrushing, dieting, money and work will make a person "look like that", when, in fact, most people are not going to ever look like Jessica Alba no matter how much time and money they invest in themselves. Holding onto a false ideal only leads to more extreme measures to conform, such as plastic surgery, liposuction, botox, etc. The only way to get back to reality is to shatter the ideal, not adhere to it.

My recommendation to anyone with a body image problem is to confront it head on. If you don't like your legs, wear shorts. If you don't like your feet, wear open sandals. And if you really want to shatter the ideal, try nudism, which brings all these issues into perspective.

Number 60 of the 205 Arguments and Observations in Support of Naturism reads as follows:

Clothing makes people look older, and emphasizes rather than hides unflattering body characteristics. Paul Fussell writes, "Nude, older people look younger, especially when very tan, and younger people look even younger...In addition, fat people look far less offensive naked than clothed. Clothes, you realize, have the effect of sausage casings, severely defining and advertising the shape of what they contain, pulling it all into an unnatural form which couldn't fool anyone...The beginning naturist doesn't take long to master the paradox that it is stockings that make varicose veins noticeable, belts that call attention to forty-eight inch waists, brassieres that emphasize sagging breasts."

You can talk all you want about how you think and feel about your body, but unless you are willing to just shed the outer shell of clothing that is the "casing" which holds all your phobias within, you haven't confronted the problem in a meaningful and constructive manner. We as a society seem more than willing to bare our souls in the media to bring balance to our minds, so why not the same for our bodies to bring balance to our entire selves?

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