There is nothing more frustrating than casually walking around the mall, indulging in a double scoop of your favorite flavor of ice cream, and coming face-to-face with a life-sized poster of a Victoria’s Secret model in lingerie. Immediately, you begin to regret your unhealthy decisions as Adriana Lima judges you with her thin frame and perfect abs. We’ve all been there.
We are so inundated with images of unrealistically skinny women in the media — women that epitomize what is conventionally beautiful and, therefore, women we work tirelessly to look like. Regardless of their size, women literally eat leaves, complain about the amount of sugar in carrots, and spend hours on the treadmill trying to achieve the constantly shifting goal of an idealized body. We are so used to this constant state of discomfort that we are only comfortable when we are uncomfortable.
Whenever a woman decides to “cheat” and orders, God forbid, a double cheeseburger and fries, she is judged. When a woman deviates off of her journey to achieve the perfect body, she is overcome with guilt. Waiters make passive aggressive comments about how much food she orders. Friends joke about how hungry she is. And, most importantly, the woman feels the urge to apologize and make excuses for indulging herself.
If we get caught enjoying the delicious comfort food of our choice, we resort to phrases like, “Oh, I haven’t eaten all day,” or “I’m going to the gym later so I will burn off the extra calories.” We should not be pressured to excuse ourselves for temporarily putting our dreams to be the next Miranda Kerr on hold. Our obsession with eating healthy 100 percent of the time is actually unhealthy to our mental health. We punish ourselves for our temporary lapse of judgment by eating more lettuce and working harder at the gym.
Women shouldn’t feel like they need to deprive themselves to be seen as thin and beautiful because, ultimately, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are worse things in the world than gaining a couple pounds from eating a slice of pizza. Our society pressures us to believe that if we are not size zero, we fail as women. However, trying to achieve an impossible goal should not be our priority. We should be focusing on building ourselves up as people. Instead of spending hours at the gym, we should be volunteering at local shelters and schools and giving back to the community. We should be more concerned with our happiness than what the number on the scale says. I’m not saying go forth and eat a whole box of donuts and wash it down with a gallon of Coca-Cola, but indulging in comfort food once in a while is not the end of the world.
Life is short. Add a little bit of carpe deim to your day by taking a moment away from your strict diet. Drop your forkful of lettuce, replace it with a cupcake, a hot dog or a tub of Ben & Jerry’s — whatever your guilty pleasure is — and enjoy. No regrets.
