"This comes after millions of women, myself included, have spent years trying to unlearn the toxic messages we were fed in our youth. That beauty equals thinness. That discipline means restriction. That our bodies must be controlled and minimized to be acceptable. We fought for size diversity, for the radical idea that you can be beautiful, strong and worthy without disappearing. And just as that movement was starting to shift the cultural tide, here comes this trend of pharmaceutical shrinking that pretends thinness is wellness."
"A danger I know intimately. When I was a teenager, my mother used to say, "If you only lost weight, you could be beautiful." She equated being thin with the worth of a woman, and believed it would grant her access to power, success and opportunities. I was a 14-year-old desperate to fit in with the cool kids. So when a popular girl in my high school freshmen class turned to me and asked how much I weighed, I answered without much hesitation."
Millions of women spent years trying to unlearn toxic messages equating beauty with thinness, discipline with restriction, and the need to control bodies to be acceptable. A movement for size diversity promoted the idea that people can be beautiful, strong and worthy without disappearing. A new trend of pharmaceutical-assisted shrinking frames thinness as wellness, sending an unspoken message that thinner is always better and creating dangerous pressure. A personal history recounts a mother who equated weight with worth, cultural 1980s influences like low-fat marketing and workout tapes, and a teenage experience that reinforced shame amid silence about mental health and eating disorders.
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