Finding Johanna

 The image of what it looks like to be a worthwhile woman is ingrained into our culture... and that image is FLAWED. For me the physical markers of the perfect body are to see my cheekbones and collar bones. To have muscular toned arms and thighs, a very flat stomach, and perky breasts. The images of women online told me that this is the body - the ONLY body- that is the good and correct way for a body to look.  Society perpetuates this belief by applauding and putting these bodies on top of the hierarchy. The numerical markers of the perfect body may have come from BMI scales - but I guess weighing 120 pounds and being a size 2 seemed like the best place in my mind.  Pursing and reaching some of these goals did not bring me peace, confidence, or happiness.  Peace - mentally all I did was stress over what I ate and when I could workout. I weighed myself about three times a day and constantly body checked in mirrors.  Confidence - I had SOME but in general constant body checking and obs

Ladies: We live in a society that taught us the best thing we can do for ourselves is try to be skinny. I witnessed this lesson first hand in a little game my daughter played on her iPad last night. It's similar to a roll playing Toca Boca type game. You feed people and based on your choices the person has a dial that goes from green to red. If they eat cake, pizza, etc. it goes to red and they actually turn fat on the screen. To help them get healthy you do sports and workout. As a person who does enjoy working out and running and yes I enjoy eating foods labeled "healthy" - all I saw was my daughter learning to self objectify and to have fat phobia.  My husband didn't see any issue.  To me  this game was saying if you get fat you're bad and then to get the dial on green, the cartoon girl had to get skinny via eating veggies and running or doing sit ups.  That to me is not even a little bit of a secret agenda - it's 1,000% diet culture. The disordered obsessi