Dying to be thin. Quite the attention grabber for a heading right? But sadly that’s what so many teenagers are doing.

I mean have we not seen enough clips depicting babies dying of hunger to know starvation is vicious and that someone out there is silently slipping away while a few image obsessed ‘’fashion slaves’’ willingly decline a meal that could’ve easily saved a life. And for what you might I ask, to look like the models on the covers of our favourite magazines? Newsflash chickas, not even the pretty girl on the glossy front page looks that perfect in reality. When each shot is airbrushed and photoshopped from here to high heaven, anyone can look like a million bucks.

So all that impressionable young girls are doing is setting themselves an unattainable goal when it’s basically an ‘’illusion’’ of beauty and I mean seriously just writing this I think of the irony in it. The fashion/beauty industry will sell you the ideal of what the perfect woman/man should be if they want to fit the mould of ‘’beautiful’’ yet it doesn’t exist because every model in every fashion campaign on any page in any given magazine, has been digitally enhanced to some degree to make the shot what it ends up looking like on that glossy page we naively take at face value.

Not because the model isn’t pretty enough but because the level of perfection they want to sell us is ludicrous enough to need technological enhancement. Kinda like that movie ‘’Simone’’ don’t you think? Did you know this is a growing epidemic that has boys dying at as much of an alarming rate as girls from anorexia? If facts are to be believed, according to the Eating Disorder Association over a million males are suffering from anorexia and bulimia in America alone, that’s one in every four people battling the disease some as young as ten.

I decided to write this article after reading about a few young girls who were on their way to runway fame and glory Ana Carolina Reston who was determined to become a supermodel. She first got introduced to the industry at age 13 gracing international catwalks modelling for Giorgio Armani and Dior by her 18th birthday and she was dead by 21. Then there’s 22- year-old Luisel Ramos who suffered a heart attack in the very same week right on the catwalk and died, this was thought to be the result of anorexia. Eliana Ramos, Luisel’s little sister also an aspiring model like her big sis also tragically died like her at 18, collapsing only six months after her sister who had been told she could “make it big” if she lost a “significant” amount of weight. She was found dead in her bedroom in her home.  “The primary diagnosis is death due to symptoms of malnutrition.”
Her grandmother, who discovered her body told papers, “This has happened to me twice. The girl would not wake up. I went into the house and saw her eyes blank and her knees tucked up.”

Then there’s Bethany Wallace a Brit model whose face was splashed on every British teen magazine from the tender age of 12 also succumbed to the pressure of ‘’staying on to’’ and died in her sleep at only 19. The average age of girls fainting, vomiting and snorting drugs backstage fashion shows simply ‘’dying to be thin and considered beautiful’’ is 13-25 about the same demographic reading this article right now and our besties who let’s face it, opinion and approval mean so much to a growing girl. Scary when you think it could be you or someone close to you becoming a part of this morbid statistic.

So girls wake up and leave dying to the dead and start living the SALTWATER GIRL way. Healthy, Happy, Adventurous and Loving Life. Because as I see it, we can diet, squeeze into that size 0 and hope to get the thumbs up from the ‘’fashion powers’’ that be or choose to shred every wave that comes your way regardless if it’s in a bikini or not, you can wear those shorts, tan those sexy legs and enjoy every last bit of that magnum on a hot summer day.
Have a sleep over and go skinny dipping in the pool at midnight whether you’re a ‘’skinny mini’’ or curvy diva, who’s judging the size of your thighs but you? So do as Ellen says, LIVE.. LAUGH.. LOVE LIFE and as I say ‘’MAKE THE DAWNING OF EACH DAY THE START OF A BRAND NEW ADVENTURE’’ because that’s exactly what living is, an adventure worth exploring and enjoying to the fullest making memories with people who love you and not the size of your ‘’skinny jeans’’.. Because in reality that flawless beauty doesn’t exist, even diamonds need polishing to sparkle.. So leave the ‘’illusions’’ to the magicians forget about conforming to ‘’fit in’’ and live your wildest dreams, bask in the sunlight of your own glory and blaze a trail that says ‘’I start trends, I don’t follow them and I’m happy to be me’’ Because you are already imperfectly perfect in every way Baby.
Image Courtesy: ts1.mm.bing.net