Be Happy, Be Healthy, Be You.

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.