FoCo desserts are the bane of my existence. Every dinner, I pine for the soft, warm chocolate chip cookies. I ache for the butterscotch Butterfinger blondies. I savor the thought of dipping the freshly baked churros in a cup of hot chocolate. But these delicacies, and the joy with which I would devour them, often pale in comparison to the immense guilt I feel in eating, craving or even looking at them. In all honesty, I am desperately afraid of indulging myself of having desserts, of skipping my workouts at the gym and of departing from my pitiful routine salad.
I know I am not alone. My fears are no doubt shared by many Dartmouth students. Although the extent to which we struggle varies, we are still united by a disordered perception of food, exercise and body image. We have been told throughout our lives that we should strive to be long and lean, that we should "bulk up," that we should avoid carbohydrates in favor of leafy greens and that we should exercise as often as possible. These habits are supposedly the keys to a happy and healthy life. Yet I challenge that notion. Are we truly happy when we consistently deny ourselves something delicious for the sake of avoiding more calories? Are we truly content in forcing ourselves to run on the treadmill to compensate for our indulgences? Is it worth it to strive for an ideal for which we have to continuously punish ourselves?
Calling such behaviors "disordered" may seem like a stretch, but these practices can come to consume us. It is easy to obsess over what we eat, how often we exercise and how our bodies look in the mirror. Many of us wonder if we should have had that slice of pizza, if that extra helping of potatoes was really necessary and if we should have abandoned carbohydrates altogether in favor of a salad. We think about how long we need to do cardio in order to burn a certain number of calories. And we scrutinize ourselves in the mirror, wondering if we have gained weight or developed enough muscle mass.
These thoughts are not female or male, for they afflict both sexes. They are not thoughts unique to members of any particular ethnicity, race, socioeconomic background or age group. They are, to varying degrees, universal. To deny that our worries about body image exist and worse, to do nothing about it is to condemn us and our peers to an obsessive lifestyle that revolves around an unfair and damaging ideal.
So how do we overcome these behaviors? How do we get students to stop worrying about what their bodies look like? There is unfortunately no single, straightforward answer. However, I believe that the first step in achieving any sort of solution is creating awareness of our disordered tendencies and the way in which we submit ourselves to a narrow-minded, inflexible ideal. We must realize to what we subject our bodies and minds because of this obsession. We must ask ourselves if it is worth it to punish ourselves in these ways. Is it worth it to hold our bodies and our peers' bodies to certain standards? Can we hope to let go of the arbitrary rules that govern our eating, exercising and the ways that we perceive ourselves?
Last Thursday, the Real Beauty Initiative hosted the "No Diet Day" celebration ("Day celebrates diverse body types," May 11). Dartmouth students should seriously consider the concept of such a celebration. We must ask ourselves how we believe beauty should really be defined and if there can truly be one universal standard to which we all must aspire. We must consider the pains we are willing to take in striving to achieve the beauty we define for ourselves. Freeing ourselves from the notions of beauty with which we have been imbued since our youth will be no easy task. Yet it is of the utmost importance that we liberate ourselves from such standards and our obsessive pursuits to achieve them.
