So, I've heard body image campaigns are a good thing

It seems that every day there is a new campaign about body image. Am I alone in this or do other people find these campaigns absolutely pointless? I’ve been questioning myself; what is so special about them, do they really help people? It appears that we are so caught up in these movements that we do not think about what they actually represent. It is marketing after all, and creation of brand loyalty, that is why all these campaigns feature (here is the latest campaign) only curvy women, or even what is commonly considered as being overweight. The question remains, why not celebrate all sizes instead of just one? And the answer is simply because the brand they are trying to promote doesn’t really care about the root of the problem as much as getting recognized

The biggest problem with these campaigns is that they pride themselves in promoting awareness or shuttering stereotypes. Everyone has their own taste and is entitled to their own opinion, and of course a woman should feel content with herself.  Let’s get real though.  People who have a problem with their weight and/or body image will never feel better because of a campaign or an advertisement. What do you know? You might wonder. Well having an anorexic person in the family and dealing with more than 8 years of weight problems I can tell you 1 thing, NOT ONE person who said “You look fine”, “Eat more” or any other encouraging words has helped. Even the nutritionists I visited throughout the years had no effect.

This is mainly because most of the eating disorders are psychological, that is why people need specialized treatment to get over them. I understand that these campaigns do not aim to help those people. They rather encourage the notion that what is considered fat or curvy is equally as attractive, but I believe they are far from hitting the target. The major problem with these campaigns is the promotion of a specific beauty standard whether it is by promoting skinny or curvy or fat. Perception of beauty is different for each and every one of us, what happened to “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? At this point you might be wondering, “Should we just not run these campaigns?”

Here is an idea, how about focusing on promoting health? It doesn’t matter if someone is a size X, people differ and they shouldn’t be judged on size anyway, they should however take responsibility for their health. Let’s assume someone with an x amount of weight is not healthy, it doesn’t matter what size he/she is, because having heart/liver/cholesterol or whatever health problem may be, is the real problem he needs to address. That’s what I had to realize and fight as well, not someone’s opinion or the perception of beauty some fashion industry tries to promote for the benefiting their brand. I might be missing something here, but bottom line, trying to promote any kind of beauty is hopeless; trying to educate people about health is what’s really important. We don’t need to accept our size to be happier, because it doesn’t matter, health and character though matter a lot.