Essay by
Amanda Krieger
Exploring my thoughts and feelings while composing this essay has
brought me to many conclusions about the many influences that my self-image has
had on my life thus far. It has become increasingly more obvious to me while
researching that certain untruths about the beauty industry are astonishing and
quite frightening. It is staggering how much importance is put into how we
present ourselves visually rather than how each of us conducts our own lives.
These are the subjects I fee most strongly about and would like to discuss with
the public.
In October 1999 I discovered my long time secret diet miracle had
been a large tumor in my left lung. For the next several months I struggled
with the choice to have this lung removed surgically and be scared for life or
to receive chemotherapy to reduce it and possibly loose all of my hair in the
process. I considered these two side effects the most and for much of the time
never even recognized the other side-effects such as the pain that may be
involved in surgery or the sickness involved in chemotherapy. As a woman I was
more concerned with what I was going to look like than how ill I was going to
become or was already. I even considered no treatment at all, if you could
believe that! If I was going to live with a less than perfect appearance than
why live at all? Thank God this consideration was not well received by my
family and I soon realized that treatment was inevitable.
At my skinniest I was 98lb. This weight on a 5'5" woman is 27
pounds under what most experts would consider healthy. I just assumed I was
lucky, I weighed less than all my girlfriends and could eat anything I wanted.
I guess my luck ran out because my friends may have weighed more but they never
had to go through the rigors of cancer. During this period where I weighed
almost nothing the media would probably see me as attractive. With the way the
models and actresses appear to the normal public these larger than life figures
weigh less and less. With actresses like Charlista Flockhardt and waif models
like Kate Moss to look up to it is not unordinary for people like myself
especially women to only feel good about themselves when they are starving
themselves to death and even then most never feel skinny enough.
I felt that my body image was what people in the media portray
as the perfect woman not because I looked healthy but because I looked thin.
When I show photos of myself during this period my less informed friends tell
me "you looked so great here what were you doing to stay so thin." I simply
reply, "I was dying."
You ask what the trade off for being that skinny was. The
photograph I am including was taken three days after I received surgery to
remove a large portion of my left lung. This example is one in which the media
would consider me a media reject. I might get a thirty second spot on the news
to tell my story, but it would be quickly interrupted by "Now hear this" and the
news would move on to something more intriguing. What you don't see in the
photograph are the two chest tubes that I had hanging out from the sides of my
body, and the six inch scar starting at my spine and continuing under my left
shoulder blade until it ends under my left arm. I chose this image to show what
the media would not want on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. This is a
photograph of a less than perfect body and in the media's view now a less than
perfect human being.
This struggle has made me think long and hard about what I have
done in the past in order to become closer to that media perfect human being. I
have spent thousands of dollars on cosmetic that say you are going to look like
Christie Brinkley as soon as you place them on your face and clothes that say
you will look ten pounds thinner when you wear this. I can remember even at
98lbs buying into these myths. Of course I never did get to look like Christie
Brinkley and the last thing in the world I needed to do was look any thinner.
Fashion affects us all and tells us before even meeting one
another whether or not we would be compatible. Fashion segregates us immediately
from people we might otherwise get along well with. This is extremely evident
in high schools across the nation. Students who can spend the money to have
name brands and nice things are instantly categorized together in an elite
group. The ones that can't are ostracized and put down over something they may
not be able to control. This media image of what fashion is, fails to inform its
young followers that it isn't what you wear; it is who you are as a person that
is important.
Now as I begin to get healthier and recover from my cancer I
look in the mirror and still believe even at the recommended weight for my
height that I should be skinnier. I still spend thousands of dollars on
cosmetics and still wish I had the face of a super model. On the other hand I
see my scar (what most would try to hide) as a badge of honor that God has given
me to remind me, and show others, my inner strengths and beauty. I believe that
the media, especially the fashion industry, is a tool of mass deception that
only harms the self-esteem of millions of men and women across the nation never
allowing them to believe for a minute that they are all right exactly how they
are.