The Changing Body Image From Skinny to Healthy

For all those weight conscience people out there, it looks as if you can finally relax those tummy muscles, take a deep cleansing breath, and let the pooch show. The anorexic look is fading out and a healthier image is returning to popularity. No more fingers down the throat. No more pill popping to decrease the appetite. No more of the Nazi death camp look. Women with a more feminine look with the curves we are intended to have are becoming encouraged by the media and even beauty pageants.

Thanks to the tabloids showing boney shots of Paris, Nichol, and Kate Moss, the sickly look of stick figures is not seen as attractive anymore. Twenty year old Georgia Horsley, crowned Miss England of 2007, has been advised to gain some weight before the Miss World pageant in China. Yes, gain weight! She is not one who has a boyish figure like the skeletal runway models. She's actually nicely filled out. She's healthy yet not chubby in any way. To gain weight would put some extra meat on what are already nourished bones.

It is so refreshing to know that such an accomplished competition of physical beauty such as the Miss World pageant is making a reversal statement of what beauty is by wanting a more womanly figure. Looking back at the decades of long ago, the full-figured woman was "in". It was attractive to have meat on the thighs, shapely hips, and an all-over curvaceous body. In the 1940's and the 1950's, and even half way through the '60's, a woman who was soft to the touch was true beauty. Then the ever-so-famous model, Twiggy, came along. She was a stick-figure with a boyish body, a boyish hairstyle, and big eyes that seemed to scream, "FEED ME!" She did not look much unlike Oliver Twist when holding out his bowl saying, "may I have some more, sir?"

At the time, Twiggy was different and very non-traditional. Someone had seen her beauty and made her a celebrity. Girls began to cut off their beehives and permanents in exchange for the modern wash-n-wear short hair style. Thin was in. It did not matter what it took, we were going to be as beautiful as the media told us to be. From that moment to the present time, diets and diet pills became a necessity. Health and the immune system began to take a nose dive since the introduction of the skeletal look and all those concerned with keeping up with what the magazines said we should keep up with. We have since suffered for it both physically as well as psychologically.

Now it seems the body image is beginning to change for women. While anorexia becomes a fad of the past, a healthier figure is beginning to take shape...pun intended. So throw out those diet pills, stop sucking down the laxatives, don't spend so much time in the restroom after a good meal, and throw out the Glamour and Elle magazines. It is time to love your body. It is time to inherit a positive self-image and be proud of your femininity! Eat healthy and stay active, that is all it takes.