"HOORAY for skinny"

, one of my friends proudly stated on Facebook after announcing her 'diet' plans to the world:  an all liquid diet of hot tea, milk, water, and orange juice supplemented with a whole whopping two fruits a day.

Why did she feel it was necessary to starve herself?  Because she wanted to be skinny and pretty like all of the other girls wherever she is living.  She gets depressed when she sees other girls who are skinnier than her because she automatically believes thinness is related to beauty.  She somehow wanted to lose 8 pounds within less than 7 days, and honestly thought this was a good and healthy idea.

"Don't try to talk me out of this.  I'd rather be a skinny pretty than a healthy fatty."


The thing is, she's not even fat at all.  I would KILL to have her figure.  She looks like Beyoncé--she's tall, curvy, and has that hourglass figure that every girl wishes for.  And she wanted to throw it all away to look like a runway model--gaunt, poky, plastic--but skinny.  Because skinny is pretty.

I, having spent a lot of time studying energy (and nutrition), tell her that she could die if she kept on doing this, or cause her body a severe amount of harm all at the expense of looking good.  She literally didn't care.  Looking good was the only thing that mattered to her.

The sad part was that she was already sosososo beautiful.

She also got angry at me for trying to advise her to eat healthy (and healthy amounts) of food, because I'm skinny and I have no right to talk to her about these things.  Little did she know that I'm skinny because I probably have a severely fast metabolism that makes me have the need to eat CONSTANTLY.  I am not skinny by choice.  I'd rather have a real womanly looking body instead of looking the way I do.  I NEED to eat at least 3 times a day or I will drop.  Honestly.

My purpose here is to not bash anyone with an eating disorder, because I understand that people have issues and I am not here to judge.  I have issues.  We all have our own issues.  What I'm TRULY upset about is what drove this beautiful girl to go to such extremes as to starve herself because she believed she had to look stick skinny in order to be pretty.

Ladies, Guys, whoever:  you are all beautiful in your own way.  This is a true fact.  You don't need to change your appearance to attract the right person or make people jealous or whatever.  We don't need anymore negativity in the world, and the right person will already see you as beautiful, regardless of your appearance.  Real people don't look like the people pictured in magazines or on TV or in movies or whatever--that is all FAKE.  That is ALL retouched and unoriginal and unreal.  You don't deserve to go through that torture, and your body doesn't deserve it either.  You are beautiful, and it will get better.

If you legitimately want to get thinner, do it in a healthy way, please.  Go speak with a nutritionist, eat smaller and healthier portions, eat balanced meals. Seek help from a psychiatrist if you think you have an eating disorder. Start an exercise regimen and work your way up to something more strenuous.  Get healthy.  Depriving yourself of food means you're depriving yourself of nutrients, putting more stress on your body and your organs, screwing up your internal balance, and may even cause body systems to fail in extreme cases.

Everyone could probably find something about their body that they didn't like, and if they say they can't then they're either full of themselves or flat out lying.  The goal here is to be okay with any "imperfections" you think you have, because you're not as imperfect as you believe.  You are beautiful and you are loved.  <3