Beauty is Not Defined By Size; Young Girls Need To Be Taught This

Eight – the age she became obsessed with everything that she ate.

Nine – her friends were playing with yo-yo toys, but she was messing with yo-yo diets.

Ten – all she wants is to fit in; she used a combination of diet pills with exercise drills.

Eleven – all she sees is her so-called bigger built for that is why she puts on extra guilt.

Twelve – she puts herself under a spell.

Thirteen – boys are starting to look at her friends like crazy. She weighs 110; she tells herself if she “gets thin” she will get the boys and she will win.

Fourteen – her body fat is finally becoming the minority, but her eating disorder is slowly taking over as seniority. She starves herself for days; her parents see it only as a phase.

Fifteen – her E.D. is finally king; she channels her pain this way because her emotions have gone away.

Sixteen – was the last birthday she would ever see. Now, her self-hatred became king. She no longer had the chance to put on a wedding ring or fly free.

Because shortly after she turned sixteen…

She left a note on her bed telling them that she is drowning.

Drowning in the tub for she suffered from lack of self-worth and seeing G-ds eternal love.

~Lama Leah

This poem turned out darker than I thought that it would go when I started writing it. When I wrote it, it was eight in the morning I hadn’t slept at all that night. The sun was rising and I was still laying in bed and G-d put the first stanza in my head. I pulled out my beloved poetry notebook and started writing. I didn’t know how it was going to end, but the L-rd placed all of the rhythms and rhymes in my head to for me to put in a poem.

Personally, I am scared for this generation of young women. Girls who are already small in size are worried about having a thigh gap or a flat stomach or whatever it is because the media is constantly showing ladies what the “ideal woman” looks like through social media, television, movies, and magazines.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I have heard devotionals or older Christian women tell me something that goes like, “Beauty is in the heart…” yes it is. I have personally found out that the most beautiful women are precious ladies because of what is their heart, but when young girls are told this, in a way, the issue is being ignored about women who struggle seeing themselves in a positive matter because of their size whether they are a size two or a size twelve.

In this day and age the pretty girls have to be tall, skinny, and beautiful because they wear makeup that makes them look naturally beautiful. This is a lie because women come in all shapes and sizes and in many cases — this is impossible! In my poem, the girl thinks that she is bigger boned because she weighs 110 pounds. I made a point to put this in there because women themselves are their own worse enemy. Young girls need to be taught that beauty is not defined by size because every women’s body is different and one size/bone structure cannot be deemed more valuable than another. It is important that older women tell the younger ones this because just like the girl in my poem she saw herself as not having a good enough body type from a young age and it developed into a serious eating disorder as the years passed. Many young women have similar stories and I won’t let the generation behind me follow that thought pattern.