Perfection Does Not Exist

This blog post was inspired by Kandee Johnson's post about perfection...

Every day we are blasted with perfectly airbrushed and photo shopped models covering the front pages of magazines and plastered on the sides of city buses.  We are part of a society that places so much value on perfection and I just wanted to say that perfection is over rated and unattainable!  If we look at those models in the magazines, they are all terribly thin and the unsuspecting teenage girl or boy (or even adults for that matter) will be fooled into thinking that is what the model ACTUALLY looks like.  Here are a few statistics to show just how much weight and image issues affect our youth:

According to a 2002 survey, 28% of girls in grade nine and 29% in grade ten engaged in weight-loss behaviours.
Boyce, W. F. (2004). Young people in Canada: their health and well-being. Ottawa, Ontario: Health Canada

Thirty-seven percent of girls in grade nine and 40% in grade ten perceived themselves as too fat. Even among students of normal-weight (based on BMI), 19% believed that they were too fat, and 12% of students reported attempting to lose weight.
Boyce, W. F., King, M. A. & Roche, J. (2008). Healthy Living and Healthy Weight. In Healthy Settings for Young People in Canada. Retrieved from http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/dca-dea/yjc/pdf/youth-jeunes-eng.pdf.

In a survey of adolescents in grades 7-12, 30% of girls and 25% of boys reported teasing by peers about their weight. Such teasing has been found to persist in the home as well - 29% of girls and 16% of boys reported having been teased by a family member about their weight.
Eisenberg, M. E. & Neumark-Sztainer, D. (2003). Associations of Weight-Based Teasing and Emotional Well-Being Among Adolescents. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 157(6), 733-738.

These statistics show that we need to place more emphasis on attainable things in life... Not looking like the models on the covers of magazines... because let’s face it; those models do not even look like that in real life!  They have cellulite and stretch marks and all of the same imperfections we all have.  I hope that one day we can move past this fascination with “PERFECTION” and realize that it is our differences and unique qualities that make each and every one of us special and important.  Wouldn’t it be boring if we all looked the same? 

The next time you think about telling somebody that they look nice or their hair is pretty, stop yourself and think about how you can compliment something more important... Compliment their kindness, their awesome goal during last Saturday’s hockey game, or their dedication to a goal they are trying to achieve :)