170416 - Dresses x Ridiculous Trends

#100happydays: DAY 2

You know how you have those days when you just want to do something nice for yourself? This was my something nice - bought the dress on sort-of impulse and decided to wear it immediately after purchase because hey, why not? It was cute, and I took a picture and sent it to Panda.

What I didn't expect was the huge boost of self-confidence that the picture (and Panda's reaction) gave me - needless to say that he was a fan of the dress. I think it's safe to say that I've found my next reliable LBD!

101 Things I Think About: DAY 2

There's a student-run magazine that I'm a part of, and we have to come up with articles for publication on the website (it's under maintenance right now, though, so check back later!). The most recent article I did was an opinion piece on the worrying beauty trends/fads that were becoming viral.

Of course, the thing about writing for anything that isn't personal is that you have to be a lot nicer about it - which explains why I'm kind of rewriting my piece here on this personal blog of mine. It's the same content, just... A little meaner, I guess, and a lot more personal.

So! What're all these beauty fads about, you ask? Fear not, Nat is here to explain.

There are beauty challenges circulating on the internet urging people (mostly women) to try them, because if you pass the challenge you're OBVIOUSLY beautiful. Note the sarcasm.

I'd like to say that only some of these trends are ridiculous, but I can't, I really can't. I mean, just LOOK at them:

The bellybutton challenge had everyone and their grandmothers twisting their arms behind their backs to touch their bellybuttons - the theory was that if you could do it then you had a perfect figure, and if you can't then it's a clear sign that you need to lose weight.

The collarbone coin challenge had everyone balancing coins in their collarbones - the more coins your collarbones could hold up (standing, not lying down!) the better your figure was supposed to be.

The A4 waist challenge - if your waist was small enough to be hidden by a sheet of A4 paper, you had a physically perfect figure.

The iPhone 6 Knee challenge is the most recent one - if your knees are small enough to be hidden by the iPhone 6, you're supposedly physically perfect.

Stupid, that's what these challenges are, and that was the word I had to struggle not to use in the article I hacked out for the student magazine. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid that someone who had way too much time on their hands came up with something as ridiculous as this, and stupid that people actually tried these challenges out and posted them all over social media.

I have a lot of anger and annoyance for these challenges, mostly because I cannot deny that I tried them too. As much as I detested myself for it, I couldn't help but twist my own arm behind my back in an attempt to reach my bellybutton, couldn't help but reach for a sheet of A4 paper to hold up against my waist in the mirror.

I knew better than to think these challenges had substance, but I couldn't help the inevitable sting that followed when I couldn't complete these challenges - I wasn't "perfect" enough by these standards.

I'm worried that anyone might read this and dismiss it as a case of sour grapes because I couldn't complete the challenges, but I'm even more worried about the fact that these challenges still hold some kind of weight, some kind of significance - I'm worried about the fact that these challenges promote body-shaming and the development of eating disorders.

That's what I'm most worried about.

Let's say someone who has never had an issue with her weight (I'm sticking to female pronouns here because the challenges are primarily targeted at women) decides to try the challenges for fun because hey, why not, and then gets told that she needs to lose weight because she can't do the challenge. Imagine that this woman who has never been overly self-conscious of her weight is now told that she's not thin enough, not perfect enough.

This might sound over-dramatic, but trust me when I say that this is how an eating disorder starts to develop. The reason why these challenges piss me off so much is because I know what it's like to have an eating disorder, and I speak the truth when I say that it's true, all of it's true. I was there once, and I still am - most days are better than others, but that's the way of things.

Having an eating disorder is hell and please please please, don't trust accounts that glamorise them and make them sound pretty and beautiful because there is nothing beautiful about sitting by the toilet crying because you can't force anything up your throat. 

There is nothing beautiful about skipping meals and watching your friends worry about you, about having some of them beg you to eat, promising them that you will eat and then throwing your food away anyway because you can't bring yourself to care enough to eat. You care so much about your friends, but you care more about losing weight.

There is nothing beautiful about the guilt, about the lying, about the inability to allow yourself to eat without seeing numbers and calories everywhere. 

It is hell, and it genuinely fucks you over. These challenges are doing nothing more than telling people that you have to look a certain way to be beautiful, that beauty is something that can be measured and posted onto social media.

I know these challenges seem fun and harmless, but trust me when I say they're not. It's sad that we've tried to come so far with body positivity and teaching people to love themselves for who they are and what they look like, and these inane challenges literally bring us one step forward and two steps back.

Think: what are we to tell our friends or family when they say that they're skipping a meal or exercising more to lose weight because a stupid challenge like these told them they were too fat to be socially acceptable?

I guess I just wanted to say this.

Stop trying to twist your arm behind your back - your shoulder may be the most flexible part of the body but it hurts, it still hurts when you try to twist it that way.

Keep your coins in your wallets and off your collarbones.

Leave the A4 paper for writing and working, not for comparing your waist to.

Use the iPhone for taking pictures, selfies, videos for snapchat, and not as something to compare your bone structure to.

I'm writing this to promise myself that I'll ignore the next beauty fad that comes rolling around. No matter how curious I am, I promise to disregard it and refuse to support it because I know better. If you're reading this post, then I hope you know better too.

Please promise me that you'll ignore the next beauty fad that comes rolling around too - promise me that you won't buy into any challenge's false promises of assured beauty should you be able to complete it, and that you'll tell those you care about to do the same because they're beautiful the way they are, and if they want to do anything to change how they look it should be because they want to for their own benefit and not because some stupid viral trend is telling them that they're not perfect enough.