Have you ever felt unhappy with your body image? The book Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson is about what happens when you become too caught up with your weight. Unsatisfied with their figures, Lia and Cassie decide to have a competition for who can loose the most weight. This conflict really shows how affected people are by what the media portrays as right or good.
As the competition endured, the girls developed anorexia and bulimia, drinking problems, and got in huge fights. They completely forgot about their strong friendship and the reason they even started the competition. They were constantly depressed, all because they thought they weren't good enough for the media's image of a women. This is really upsetting to me because it is common in our current society for people to focus on what is wrong about themselves because they think they aren't good enough.
This is an important issue of social justice because what the media puts out is a negative influence on confidence and overall happiness. How can we be happy if, like Lia, we are too busy counting calories to notice how much our friends and family love us? I hope that one day, body image won't be an issue of social justice.
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