Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Hol­ly­wood has in­vad­ed every so­ci­ety on this plan­et. Keep­ing the body God gave you is ab­nor­mal when breast im­plants, butt aug­men­ta­tion, lipo-suc­tion, botox and oth­er cos­met­ic en­hancers are the way to go.

The per­ceived no­tion of the "per­fect body" by Hol­ly­wood has pen­e­trat­ed the minds of the av­er­age teen/woman, leav­ing them to be­lieve that these im­ages of air brushed pho­to shop mod­els are the re­al deal. The T&T Guardian in­ter­viewed 27-year-old Natasha, who shared her strug­gles as an over­weight woman. "I have nev­er had a re­al boyfriend. Boys in­ter­est­ed in me were not in­ter­est­ed in me as a per­son, but rather just us­ing me for in­ti­mate com­fort. "As an over­weight girl I have had so many in­sults geared to­wards me, whether it was stand­ing in a line, get­ting in a car or buy­ing food at a restau­rant. "The ex­pres­sions on peo­ple's faces al­ways sug­gest­ed that I was 'out­ta my place' to be ex­ist­ing. "In school if I had any 'fall outs' with any­one, the first thing they'd do is at­tack my weight. Some­how call­ing me by my name was not the nor­mal thing to do-I was al­ways re­ferred to as 'de fat girl.' "Even when some­one was be­ing nice to me it was still 'aye fat­ty, how yuh do­ing?'

"It has al­ways been hard for me to main­tain self-es­teem, as my weight al­ways seemed to get in the way.

To add to Natasha's pain, read­ing an ar­ti­cle, last year, ti­tled Should Fat­ties Get A Room (Even On TV), cre­at­ed fur­ther in­se­cu­ri­ties for the St Joseph na­tive. The piece writ­ten by Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist, Mau­ra Kel­ly and post­ed on MarieClaire.Com, sought to ad­dress the is­sue of obe­si­ty and fo­cused on the tele­vi­sion sit­com Mike and Mol­ly-a cou­ple who meet at an Overeaters Anony­mous group and falls in love. How­ev­er, in­stead of al­lud­ing to con­struc­tive crit­i­cisms, Kel­ly claimed she would be grossed out if she had to watch two char­ac­ters with rolls and rolls of fat kiss­ing each oth­er. She said she found it aes­thet­i­cal­ly dis­pleas­ing to watch an ex­treme­ly fat per­son sim­ply walk across a room. The ar­ti­cle caused quite a stir among the over­weight and those who are obese. It even drew the at­ten­tion of celebri­ty talk show host, Sharon Os­bourne, who lashed out at the jour­nal­ist, and lat­er can­celled her sub­scrip­tion to the mag­a­zine, stat­ing that Kel­ly was a dis­cred­it to all women. She added that ar­ti­cles like that com­pound­ed the prob­lem par­ents have to­day with their kids re­gard­ing low self-es­teem, in­se­cu­ri­ties, anorex­ia and sui­cide.

Keep­ing the con­fi­dence

Lo­cal Im­age Con­sul­tant, Cather­ine Gor­don of Cather­ine Gor­don and As­so­ciates Im­age and De­sign In­sti­tute, gave her ad­vice on how a "fat girl" could main­tain her con­fi­dence lev­els. "This whole busi­ness of be­ing thin is re­al­ly a west­ern con­cept. If you could re­call, the an­cient Greek, In­di­an and African stat­ues of women al­ways in­di­cat­ed that the 'chub­by' woman was the de­sired one," said Gor­don. She added that con­fi­dence for a fat girl re­al­ly start­ed in the home with fam­i­ly and the ones clos­et to her, help­ing her to de­vel­op a strong sense of self. "I re­mem­ber watch­ing an in­ter­view with ac­tress Mo'Nique and she said her fa­ther nev­er re­ferred to her as a fat girl...he nev­er said things to her like you are beau­ti­ful for a fat girl. He just al­ways in­stilled in her that she was a gor­geous woman. "These women need to have a sup­port sys­tem-peo­ple who will con­stant­ly re­mind them that they are beau­ti­ful and it is not all about the out­side ap­pear­ance," ad­mon­ished Gor­don.

"They should al­so un­der­stand that while they are be­ing re­mind­ed that they are beau­ti­ful, they al­so need to ac­cept that they are, and find­ing the im­ages of suc­cess­ful women who have made it...like the Mo'Niques and Oprahs, is a clever way to start ap­pre­ci­at­ing them­selves." Gor­don said when big girls con­tin­ued to look at skin­ny mod­el mag­a­zines, this could be­come very un­healthy for them be­cause they would be con­stant­ly bom­bard­ed by weight loss pro­grammes. She said in most in­stances women who were not a size ze­ro, were made to feel that they were not beau­ti­ful, that they would not get a boyfriend, they could not be hap­py, or that some­thing was dra­mat­i­cal­ly wrong with them. She re­it­er­at­ed that they should get im­ages that looked like them-women who were healthy and suc­cess­ful.

Get a good ed­u­ca­tion

Gor­don al­so re­vealed that hav­ing a good ed­u­ca­tion al­so helped to boost the con­fi­dence of an over­weight girl. "Part of build­ing your self-es­teem is hav­ing a good head on your shoul­der. You can slim down all you want but if your brain is emp­ty-your con­fi­dence will be in jeop­ardy. So if you are a shy per­son then en­roll in some pub­lic speak­ing course, when you are com­pe­tent, peo­ple don't see the pounds. "Maybe you like to swim but you fear hav­ing to wear a bathing suit. Get that out of your mind. Learn to swim if you want to. You don't have to wear a two-piece, there are very styl­ish bathing suits that give full cov­er­age. "I am say­ing don't sti­fle your­self be­cause of your weight-do what en­cour­ages you to feel beau­ti­ful. I know when you are sit­ting in the sit­u­a­tion it will seem hard, but the soon­er you de­vel­op the in­ner you, that is all you will see. "So while you are work­ing on cut­ting down on your weight, do so safe­ly and take it one day at a time. In the mean­time just re­mem­ber that fat does not mean that you are not beau­ti­ful."