Social Media Fuels Body Image Anxiety
One short life, one powerful addiction and navigating it all.
Growing up, my only exposure to the ideal male physique was fitness magazines.
My monthly dose of feeling terrible about myself.
Dudes on steroids telling me how to get jacked. Like motorists telling pedestrians how to go 100 miles per hour.
Each edition contradicted the previous. Eat big to get big. Drop calories in the extreme.
Push and pull at the same time.
I destroyed my relationship with food in pursuit of the ideal body. It was overwhelming. I spent years in the diet-binge cycle. The harder I dieted, the worse I binged.
Dig up, stupid.
I thought dieting was something you did or fell off for about a decade.
I had a list of banned foods. And if I violated them by so much of a sniff or a crinkle of the rapper, the floodgates opened.
And boy, did they open.
Shame and guilt were as common in my diet as edible foods — of which through obsession, there weren’t many left.
I feel sorry for both men and women. The male ideal is often not attainable naturally. The female ideal is strict, rigid, and the…
