Is There Too Much Pressure on Girls to Have ‘Perfect’ Bodies?

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(Image via Need Pix)

Kaydence Royland, Writer

Did you know that society is suggesting that the ideal female body should be skinny, toned, and tall? Although some people believe women should have that ideal body, some women are happy just the way they are and don’t want to change for anybody. Some people stereotype women as “perfect,” but the truth is that nobody in this world is perfect. In society today, a lot of young girls and women feel insecure about their bodies because people body shame others when they really should be hyping them up, not breaking them down.

The article Is There Too Much Pressure on Women to Have ‘Perfect’ Bodies? states that “over 1,674,251.33 of American women suffer from anorexia and over 2,511,376.995 suffer from bulimia nervosa in their lifetime.” Just reading that tells you what society is doing to people. People are becoming anorexic to fit the ‘perfect’ stereotype body women are told to have. It has been like this since before social media, but now that we have social media, it has only gotten worse. In 2020, people are trying to spread the idea of having self-love, but people around the world are still trying to obtain a ‘perfect’ body. In that same article, it states that “every 62 minutes at least one person dies as a direct result from an eating disorder.” It’s crazy how society can drive people to do those kinds of things. The article also states that “in this era, women will do anything to meet social demands and emulate those who are deemed flawless.” People even go to the extreme measures of having surgery to lose weight, unhealthy diets, excessive exercise, and may end up developing an eating disorder, which could lead to death. 

There need to be more ways to help prevent this from happening. If you wanna lose weight, do it for yourself, not for a man or woman telling you what to look like. If you decide you want to lose weight, you should do it in a healthy way, such as eating a healthy and well-balanced meal and exercising. In society, it is not common for people to hear that a boy is having surgery to get a better body, but it’s more common for girls. The pressure on women is greater than it is on men, but there is still pressure on men to have a nice body.

In conclusion, society needs to stop trying to force women to look a certain way or weigh a certain amount. Especially impressionable young girls. Not all women want a ‘perfect’ body because they feel they already have one. They’re confident in how their body looks, and they are not going to change it, especially not for anybody else, and if they do change it, it’s for themselves in a good, healthy way. As a society, we need to educate people that there’s way more to a person than just physical appearance, and we should have respect and love for each other and ourselves.