Well it’s that time of year again, ladies. And no I don’t mean the holidays. Were you one of the over ten million people who tuned in to watch the Victoria Secret Fashion Show last week? If not, you didn’t miss much – just a bunch of size zero models strutting their stuff wearing nothing but embellished undergarments and those infamous sets of wings. Social media accounts were buzzing with opinions of how women should look and be portrayed. After watching beautiful women walk down the runway and reading people’s thoughts on Facebook and Twitter, it’s hard to go to bed feeling confident and secure in your own skin.

According to a recent study of teens in the U.S., about 6% of teen girls have had an eating disorder (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder) or a sub threshold condition. These numbers are staggering, and after watching paper-thin models walk down the runway, I wonder if these numbers will keep getting higher. The Victoria Secret Fashion show is meant to reveal the New Year’s line in a creative and sexy way, however; each year it ignites the yearly debate about body image and what is the correct way women should look. The models portray a thin and “ideal” body image that is almost impossible to reach for the average women. This unattainable beauty is what seems to be causing the uproar. Women do not feel as though these girls are real or healthy.

So before you go judge yourself and compare how you look to the models on the runway, remember that it’s the advertising companies who are creating this idea of beauty and setting goals that are far too high for most of us to ever reach. Who is to say that the advertising industry is right? Do we have to reach these impossible goals set out by this lingerie company? Absolutely not! Not everyone thinks that being model thin is beautiful and we should not be confined by a set of ideals created by society. Many teens put in a lot of effort trying to cover their “flaws”–from putting concealer on pimples to wearing uncomfortable undergarments that promise to smooth out rolls. We are trying to cover up or hide something that society says is incorrect but what defines a flaw?

In the dictionary a flaw can be defined as a “mark, fault, or other imperfection that mars a substance or object.” However, our flaws are what makes us human and makes us real. There is no “ideal” woman; there is no set of rules, and standards we need to meet in order to be perfect. Being beautiful is so much more than the size of our clothes. It is about being true to who we are, how we treat others and how we react to situations we cannot control. I believe these are the qualities that need high standards and these are the things we need to strive to be the best at every day. When we can set ideals and standards for our actions, our looks will suddenly seem less important.

-Laura