Teens struggle to fit the picture perfect body image
Dewi Santoso, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Ask people about the meaning of beauty, and most would agree that beauty lies within, which is a short description of a belief that beauty cannot be measured by one's physical appearance, but rather by the positive attitude that makes a person beautiful.
To Santi, however, beauty means being slim. The 16-year-old, 157-centimeter-tall girl who weighs 52 kilograms, is struggling to lose weight, putting herself on an extreme regimen of apples and diet pills.
"I want to lose another five kg to reach 47 kg. I want to have a body like a model, you know," Santi said recently.
Santi is not alone. Dina, another 17-year-old high school student shares Santi's anxiety.
"I'm not happy with my body. I always think that I'm fat and that I will have more confidence if I could lose another five to seven kilograms."
Dina, who is 155 cm tall and weighs 55 kg, is following a diet that eliminates fats, proteins and carbohydrates. She eats just fruits and vegetables.
Santi and Dina are perfect examples of the mindset that the current younger generation has embraced. To them, curves are out, thin is in.
One study done in the United States of America shows that 47 percent of girls are influenced by magazine pictures and want to lose weight, while only 29 percent are actually overweight.
"The current younger generation already has their own concept of an ideal body image. To them, thin is beautiful. Everything that's not thin is not beautiful," said Evi Sukmaningrum, a psychologist from Atma Jaya University in Jakarta.
The media, according to Evi, plays a major role in creating such beliefs. With magazines and television featuring thin models and actresses, young girls are influenced to lose weight so as to look just like them.
What is most disturbing in Santi's and Dina's cases is that they are being pressured to be thin, not only from the magazines and television, but most of all, from their families and friends.
"I never saw myself as fat until the day my cousin and my mom told me so. Then, I started to go on a diet," said Santi.
Unlike Santi's, Dina's case is peer pressure. She admitted that being the only girl in her group to weigh more than 50 kg made her feel inferior.
"I've got three best friends, and they all weigh less than 50 kg. They look so slim, so confident. I'm the only one whose weight is above 50, and it makes me feel left out."
It may seem that Santi and Dina are simply dieting too much, and that they soon will realize that their eating habits are unhealthy. But, the fact is, the issue is not that simple.
Santi and Dina's stringent dieting to reach their weight targets can develop into a more serious issue: anorexia nervosa and bulimia -- eating disorders that can be life threatening.
According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, 1 percent of teenaged girls in the United States develop anorexia nervosa and up to 10 percent of those may die as a result, and approximately five percent of college women have bulimia.
Girls with anorexia nervosa typically starve themselves to be thin and experience excessive weight loss, while bulimics are characterized by their binge eating and purging.
The most dangerous fact is that many teens successfully hide these disorders from their families for months or even years.
Although there are no clear statistics showing the number of teenagers with anorexia and bulimia in Indonesia, that does not mean that teenagers in Indonesia do not have eating disorders.
A psychologist from the University of Indonesia, Tri Iswardani, better known as Dani, related a case where a teenage girl was battling with bulimia for years before this was finally discovered by her family and treated.
Santi and Dina may not have reached the stage of anorexia or bulimia. But being adolescents, their strict dieting can be damaging to their health and can lead to various health problems such as dehydration and irregular menstrual periods. And in Santi's case, the diet pills that she is taking could lead to heart disease or even claim her life.
"During adolescence, girls are not supposed to go on a strict diet, let alone take diet pills, because they need nutrition for their hormones," Dani said.
She added that even if a girl were indeed overweight, she should not go on a strict diet. She should just exercise more, not too heavily, without starving herself.
"The most important thing is for parents to make sure that their children follow a smart and healthy living pattern, instead of focusing on an unhealthy body image," Dani said.
This would be helpful for both Santi and Dina to know as they are the victims of the current distortion called the "perfect body image".
Hopefully, from Evi and Dina's explanations, parents and peers will quit pressuring their daughters and friends to be like models and actresses -- thin.
As Santi said, "The problem is not magazines or television because I know it's not real. People are supposed to be thin and beautiful there. But when you hear it from your own parents, then it hurts."