In a world where we are constantly told how we must look, from the media, from advertising, from the celebrity world, it’s hard to know what’s okay. Fortunately, people are beginning to realise that it doesn’t have to be that way and are beginning to accept that not all women can be stick thin.

 

Or not so fortunately, some say. Britain is at the center of an obesity epidemic and is often named “the fat man of Europe”. So how are we meant to know when to accept ourselves as we are and when we actually do need to lose weight?

 

 We have been told our whole lives that it’s good to be skinny like the models that are shoved in our faces wherever we go, which has on it’s own, provoked a series of eating disorders in many young people, like anorexia nervosa. Anorexia is a serious mental illness that can distort a person’s view of their body, and can make them think that they are too fat when they are not. This   can very often end up in a person suffering from malnutrition and may other effects.

 

As you can see, this is a horrible prospect and it’s ridiculous that this was happening so often ad it is getting so out of hand. Relief was widespread when celebrities began to be respected and looked up to, despite the fact that they were not stick-thin.

 

Meghan Trainor released the track All About That Bass, which told girls and women that it was okay to be bigger, and promoted the fact that skinny wasn’t always the best. Her debut single reached number one within one week of digital release. It became the fourth best selling single of 2014 and one of the best selling singles of all time, selling a total of 11 million singles.

 

But the big question is how do we know when to stop accepting a person’s weight and start taking action to stop them becoming overweight or obese?

 

As aforesaid, Britain is leading the Western European obesity epidemic, and it is predicted that, by 2050, over half of Britons will be overweight. Obesity has trebled in the last thirty years and has caused Britain to become an “obese society”, meaning that obesity has become normal.

 

Current figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2013 report show that 24.9% of the British population is currently obese, just ahead of Ireland (24.5%), Spain (24.1%) and Portugal (21.6%). France has the lowest obesity levels in Western Europe, with 15.6% of its population being obese.

 

Although under eating can be linked to many illnesses, over eating can cause an abundance of health issues. These include diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, colon cancer and heart attacks. All of these are life threatening and obesity can reduce a person’s life expectancy by an average of 3 years.

 

I think the real solution to this problem is to find a balance between these issues. Let’s be honest: we’re never going to get anywhere by telling everyone that they must be skinny but we’re not if we tell everyone that it’s okay to become obese either. What we should be doing is finding a way to tell people that it is okay to be any shape but giving the right support to people who have found themselves gaining unhealthy amounts of weight without them being laughed at and mocked.

 

Society still does see overweight and obese as bullying and mocking material, so it’s clearly not a black and white situation. It looks like we’re going to have to enter the grey.

 

BY KASIA FALLAN, BRAMPTON MANOR ACADEMY