Monica
Rambert
Mr.
Anderson
English 2
9-11-12
Be Happy,
Be Healthy, Be You
Have you ever looked in the mirror and wanted to change yourself from the
outside?
Do you look at models and celebrities found in magazines and desire to be like
them? Are
you constantly asking others if you’re overweight even when you know you’re
far from
it? Teenage girls and adult women, seem to be the victims of these questions.
It
seems
like we always have our heads in a magazine or maybe we just look
online and
see
figures of women. These figures always seem “skinny”. It’s a word that
bites at us,
along
with words like thin or petite. For some, the journey of getting “skinny”
seems
impossible,
but have you ever thought that just being healthy and eating right could be
so much
better?...
Teenage
girls should put an end to the dieting and starving of their bodies. They
should come to a realization of how it can affect them now and in the
future,that magazines are filled with photo-shop and not photo-natural.
If you
find yourself looking in the mirror, having the desire to be like the image you
just
saw in a
magazine, consider the steps you would take to get there. How you
take care
of your
body is a serious thing. Eat the right foods and have the self-motivation to be
yourself.
In
our society it seems that skinny is the new pretty. I’ve never been
on the heavy side
of the
scale- but I know the cons of being skinny, even too skinny. True,
There’s nothing
wrong
with being thin, or even desiring to have a healthier body weight. I’ve
come to find
that
being healthy, is a serious matter one which greatly influences your future, as
well
as
current state of health. Is it possible however to be healthy, and be
yourself?...
I was
never exactly-big, neither were my birth parents, so I never expected to
be.
I
contributed to the solving of occasional problems we’d have as a
family. I was the one who got to be pushed through the window to unlock doors.
I was the one who was pushed through tiny crevices to pick up the little
trinkets that would otherwise go up the vacuum hose. The down side was waiting
to sit in the front passenger seat ,and let my two twin siblings, who
were larger than me sit there before me. In school I was called unattractive-
nicknames, like “The walking stick” and “skin and bones.” For me elementary
school seemed far more dramatic than any high-school... but when I entered high
school, the doctor’s visits became more serious, my size became an issue, it
was far more dramatic...
Everyone
has a fear, for some it’s heights, spiders or perhaps that creepy guy on that
one movie. For me my fear, was hospitals .I had heard about the
loneliness at night, the horrid food and the continuation of shots throughout
the day. I never thought I’d have to face a hospital in my life until the day my
dad confronted me about my size. We were at the dinner table, I didn’t eat
much, never really did.
My dad
sounded irritated and had anger in his voice. He said; “If you don’t
start eating more at home, at the table, then you’re going to have to go to the
hospital and they can feed you through tubes.”
I was
horrified, started crying, and was confused at what to do next- head to the
freezer, head to the pantry or dump about five more spoonfuls of food on my
plate?
My dad is
about two feet taller than me, larger, and talks in a deep voice that
seems to shake the room. When he saw the tears roll down my cheeks
and my face in
puzzlement
he took compassion on me, telling me that he was just worried about my
current
size and only wanted to help, that eating enough and being healthy were two
serious
things at my age.
I never
really saw myself as being “petite” I thought I was average, and the same
size as
the girls whom I associated with- mainly at church because I was homeschooled
at the
time- I thought this until my mom made comments like this : “I poked my
head in t
the door
and saw you in Sunday school, and compared to those other girls you sure are
tiny!”
I tried
to persuade my mom, pointing out the girls I knew had to be smaller than me, my
younger brother answered the question for her by saying; “No Monica, you’re the
smallest
in that whole class.”
“Well,
great!” was what I said in response, I started
panicking-
surely Dad thought the same thing, I had eaten more, and healthily too,
but it
didn’t seem
good enough to make the scale go up, I’d work out and it would go down,
sometimes
I’d put weights in my shoes just to say I made some effort. I just couldn’t go
to
the
hospital. I didn’t want to be “Monica-the- cripple- at fourteen, I wanted to
be Monica-
just-
won-a-marathon! “
I did
some research on why It was important for me to eat so much food and not the
good food like Cocoa Puffs and ice cream- the granny stuff like oatmeal and 1%
milk, bran or raisins. I discovered that eating enough and healthily prevented
things like anorexia, a nasty disease where the Nickname “skin and bones” could
easily be applied. I discovered that sugar- although delicious beyond measure,
is quite bad for you, and that it also creates dandruff, I discovered that it
was carbs, and the contributing hand of sugar that created bad fat, that fat
itself was actually good for you.
So I
applied my new found knowledge and started eating healthy things although some
were gross, like Vitamin D milk, which tastes like whipped cream, or asparagus,
which tastes to me, like the smell of weeds.
Some
things were good, like carrots or broccoli, potatoes or grapes. My visit to the
doctor consisted of the same old check-up but then a speech about how I was on
the low average of both height and weight.
I felt
like a loser that day- obviously she didn’t know about all the hard work I had
put into my eating habits.
Weeks
went by, the scale didn’t seem to go up much, the girls at church told of their
dieting and how their greatest desire was to be 115 pounds, I couldn’t
contribute to the conversation- seeing as I was far less than that weight, when
I went to the homes of my friends they had pictures of celebrities and models,
they told me of how they wanted to be like them. I watched the news and
how teenage girls of the world were portraying the same message.
The
message I have is that being you is most important, we already have a Taylor
Swift,
and an Angelina Jolie, we don’t need to have two. Being you, eating enough and
eating healthy along with being happy is what everyone needs.Starving yourself
isn’t the way to a happy,skinny and healthy life it leads to a destruction of
your body, I know because I was almost there myself.
So be
happy, be healthy, be you.
