As i was walking through the mall alone last night, i seemed to be more aware of the mannequins. although i dont think these deserve to be called "mannequins" because well they dont model what people look like in clothes, unless of course you have a severe eating disorder and have gotten to the point of emmaciation. and even then, a lot of people with eating disorders dont reach the state of emmaciation. i go shopping all the time and i am constantly seeing these mannequins but for some reason, they jumped out at me last night. maybe its because i was shopping alone and was more stuck in my head, or maybe its the fact that i know i am entering treatment in the near future and still have that huge fear that i will be the largest one there. whatever the reason it is, it doesn't matter. alll that matters is that these mannequins do not promote a healthy body image, or anything any women should strive to become. it makes you believe that you dont deserve to wear those clothes unless you look like those stick pieces of hard, cold plastic. for me last night, what stuck out was their legs. i kept looking at them in awe and jealousy. I then immediatly transformed these feelings into self-hate, disgust that i didn't feel my legs looked like this. disgust with how much fat i think my thighs contain. which of course gives my eating disorder the power to scream at me and rip me apart piece by piece. unfortunately, we live in society where image has become everything and it has become hard to live without seeing the constant reminders of our "flaws." They are thrown in our face everywhere we turn. this especially effects us women. we are constantly at odds with ourselves over how we look vs. how the world around us says we should look. mannequins have given young girls and even women a false idea that these are the 'perfect' woman and cause them to strive for an unrealistic and often an unattainable goal which leads to self hate and even severe, and deadly eating disorders. mannequins are meant to give shoppers a general sense of what a store's clothes might look like on a human body. but they do not fulfill their purpose cause only an extremely small percentage actually look at these pieces of plastic junk.
these mannequins aren't the only thing that bothered me. another thing that stuck out to me was the term "skinny jeans" its forcing women to access whether they are, in fact, "skinny" enough to wear those pants. i can't tell you how many people i know have claimed that they cant wear skinny jeans because they dont think they are thin enough, me being one of them.
maybe i am overreacting over all of this because of my eating disorder and the fact that i want to prevent as many people as i can from developing one. but honestly, i think i am being perfectly reasonable. i wish so badly that the media would take their eyes of the womens body and their flaws and what we should look like. we have become bait in this crazy world.
