- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
“Perfection can’t be achieved..even beautiful people feel that they ‘lack’ in some way.”
Today, I’m talking about stories that involve the loss of life due to extreme efforts to meet the existing standards of beauty, including excessive dieting and plastic surgery. Today, I’m talking about what we can learn from these stories.
“I have experienced first-hand that trying to change one’s self to meet the standard in a dramatic way… can kill you.”
Jasmine lost her mother to complications related to a liposuction procedure. Did you know this happens? Recently, a former Ms. Argentina died after cosmetic surgery. How many lives are lost this way? We hear about the models who have died trying to maintain a thin figure for the runway. Those not in the bright lights don’t capture the headlines, but the loss is every bit as tragic. What is next if we don’t implement change? And by change, I don’t just mean the media, but our own individual changes to the way we think about beauty. What is our own responsibility here? How do we relate to the standard? How does this guide our thought and actions? And how do we pass this along in our daily lives to others around us, particularly our younger generations?
Carolina Reston (pictured to the left), a Brazilian model, lost her life three years ago at the age of 21, due to complications related to anorexia nervosa. She was trying to maintain a weight she believed was required for her to be a successful model. Luisel Ramos, a Uruguayan model, died the same year from complications related to anorexia nervosa at age 22. Not long after, her sister, Eliana Ramos, age 18, died from complications related to malnutrition (associated with Anorexia) the same year. These deaths led Madrid to ban models from the catwalk with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18 (a BMI of below roughly 18.5 is the criteria for anorexia).
Undoubtedly, these measures were needed. However, they were a day late and a dollar short, and these deaths could have been avoided.
These stories inspired this blog, but are not the take home point. These stories are preventable tragedies. We talk about these tragedies, but that is not the same as taking action to suppress extreme ideas, our own or others’. We think of the media as a big bad ugly enemy, but we are accountable, too. We fuel the fire with the ideas we repeat and endorse, and when we pursue unhealthy efforts to change our appearance. We fan the flames when we judge others based on appearance, and when we reinforce our friends and loved ones in their pursuit of unhealthy behaviors for appearance’s sake.
Why? Unknowingly, we have become the distributors of these messages in our own immediate environment. We are carriers of faulty messages through our subtle actions as much as our declarations and statements. We are role models for the younger generation of media hungry, but naïve, minds. Where does this end?
I often ask people what inspires them to influence others in a positive way. In Jasmine’s case, she says the children around her (family and friends) inspire her to be mindful of her own actions related to her body and how she judges and behaves towards others.
“People you love can say horrible things and those things stick with you”.
None of us desires to be this person…the person that says something that’s emblazoned in someone’s brain throughout their life as a negative reference point. We all say things, unmindfully, and later wish we could take them back. If we are mindful to begin with, there is nothing to take back. If we are mindful in the way that we process the information coming in, and in how we choose to display our own messages (our words and actions), we become beacons of a new message.
Ultimately, this message should be one of nonjudgment, acceptance, and giving others the benefit of the doubt when you don’t really know their story. We can’t determine someone’s story from simply observing their appearance. This involves assumptions, judgmental appraisals, and worst of all sometimes, criticism. This approach completely violates the tenets of mindfulness.
“You can influence someone by changing yourself.”
