Beautiful just the way you are

This evening on my way to the gym, i was on the bus and I saw this young girl, standing with her huge back pack listening to her ipod. She looked about 13 with a shy demeanor about her yet slightly unsure of herself. Very innocent and all I could do was say a small prayer for her that she grows up to love herself and not let society and friends influence her to be someone she is not. I know weird for me to do that for someone I know nothing about but the world we live in today, you really dont know what people are going through so the best thing to do is say a prayer for them and wish them well...

I know my thoughts were far fetched and a bit extreme considering I knew nothing about this young girl but someone was telling me today how she was in the hospital with her teenage son and she saw a lot of anorexic teenagers who were near death because for some reason or the other they didnt believe that they were slim enough to be noticed. I am no expert on anorexia so it will be ignorant of me to say that they became anorexic because of societal pressures to be slim but for a teenage girl to be that sick obviously it may be fair to assume that is what it is.

Now most of you who have read my blogs and know who I am, may know that my own self image at times has not always been where it needs to be. I have tried excessive diets to lose the weight just to lose a few pounds and put it all on again because for some reason I believed that when the weight came off, it would stay off so you can imagine my disappointment when it kept coming back. Of course I was no near anorexic but what makes what I was doing any different than these bullemic or anorexic girls who are doing the same.

I will say this though, we are gradually becoming a society where we are beginning to accept people for who they are, big or small, tall or shot, fat or skinny but we still have a long way to go. We have to fight obesity, we have to fight anorexic and we have to fight the biggest problem, lack of self confidence which pretty much is the key to all the image problems that are faced by our young people today.

Once we learn to teach our young people especially our young women that beauty is not what you wear, how much make up you have on, how slim or fat you are but really what is in side of you then hopefully young people today wont be so concerned about their body image.

I no way shape or form am I promoting people to gain weight but I feel we need to really get out of this whole mentality that looking a certain way will make you more beautiful, or more desired or more popular. Parents need to teach their kids that taunting others and bullying others only makes you look like a coward and insecure because bullies are insecure people who dont feel they are good enough so they prey on people who they believe are beneath them when really these people are strong beautiful individduals who have done nothing wrong but accept that they are who they are but people obviously think they are not good enough.

While that young girl I saw today is just another young girl I hope that she grows up to be a beautiful self assured individual who learns to believe that her beauty has nothing to do with how she looks outwardly but what inside is what really counts. Lets try to stop bullying and anorexia. Lets get our magazines and tv shows to start showing that beautiful people do not come in a standard size but they all come in different shapes and sizes. Even models and TV stars dont look the way they portray them to be.