Try costume and 'culture of diet', change - Lifestyle

Our complexes? They went on vacation. On holiday by the sea, in costume, more exposed to the gazes of others and to our own often very heavy judgments try instead to be as we are, do not aspire to the perfection of forms according to an aesthetic model that does not necessarily suit us, belongs to us and patience if the celebrities we admire and the influencers we follow on instagram show the best side of themselves, very often the b side. Accept yourself, be yourself, like yourself and love yourself almost as a mental health cure, or at least try, judge yourself less and avoid obsessions: about beauty, thinness and aiming straight at being in good health, which does not mean not giving a damn about balance of course but try to avoid unhealthy insecurities and harmful eating patterns. The positive leotard season is now. 

It is also a generational fact. People, especially women, of previous generations belong to the

. We started as teenagers and never stopped for life, very often we concentrated in the period before the infamous costume fitting. Of course this did not mean being very thin people because on the contrary the diet followed the weight recovery, the so-called yoyo effect, but 'staying on a diet' was for many an existential condition and phrases such as 'Tomorrow I start the diet' have resonated in every house for decades.

In many cases this has been a sort of imprinting on children who try to look like their parents, to mothers with very often problematic results.

If you read the reports of the associations on eating disorders, it is full of very young people who highlight this

. "I was 10 when I started feeling insecure about my body. At 11, I started feeling ashamed about food. At 13, I started limiting my eating. At 17, I was on Weight Watchers." example on Neda (the US association against eating disorders) reported by Teen Vogue but in Italy it would be no different. 

According to a Common Sense Media study, children between the ages of 5 and 8 who think their mothers are dissatisfied with their bodies are likely to have the same ideas about their bodies. Perhaps worse, one in four children tried the diet at age 7. For today's girls, their mothers probably started dieting at a similar teenage age, and their mothers before them. And, for different cultures, these

can manifest themselves in different and intense ways. Foods, methods, cultural traditions and terminology have changed, but the goal has remained the same: to

regardless of the negative consequences or personal repercussions.

Today's youth are increasingly struggling

and a transnational generation of activists has paved the way for a more critical eye on the issue. However, despite a greater representation of different types of physique and outward proclamations of self-love, the lessons they learned in those childhood years about what one should look like remain etched despite the best of intentions. 

"My mother was born in the late 1960s, being part of Generation X. She was born during the rise of the diet culture as we know it today -

. It is a whole system of feelings, thoughts and movements in the world. It's everything from the gender norms that expect particular diets and body shapes from men and women to the way the media industry supports diet culture, "said Emily JH Contois, author of

.

"Generation X and Baby Boomer women, like my mother - continued the author - grew up rooted in diet culture that told them that

. Their celebrity models were largely all skinny. Pop culture involved weight loss, and a new trendy diet apparently appeared every year. There was

and the cookie diet in the 1970s; cabbage soup and

; the low-fat craze of the 1990s. 

. But their Generation Z and millennial daughters, like me, born into a growing revolution of

- or, more recently,

- and self-acceptance,

. For women who have a history of dieting - I think they sometimes convey those destructive ideas about how you should eat, how you think about "good" and "bad" foods, what it means to be thin. "Many mothers want the best for their daughters. , but their ideals are not necessarily the same as their daughters.

There are testimonials, read in Teen Vogue, like that of Meg, 57, who grew up ashamed of her body, induced to diet when she was very young and with eating disorders that persisted into adulthood. When Meg had her daughter, Carson, who is now 22, she knew she didn't want to treat her the way her parents had treated her. But when Carson gained weight, Meg panicked and started restricting her eating, perpetuating the cycle. Los Angeles-based nutritionist and yoga teacher

. The road to self-acceptance is tough, but there is greater social awareness today, within Generation Z and millennials, and in society at large as well. "There is a lot more diversity in size and shape and what people will wear and how they will proudly show off their bodies." Breaking the cycle between mothers and daughters is a start. Education - about what diet culture is, how it manifests itself, how it affects relationships and how to fight it - may be the key to breaking this toxic cycle.

It is not an easy thing to do frankly, not to mention

but there are ideas for change,even with hints of irony like those of

, the Instagram account that offers posts in the name of

. A few days ago there was a smiling curvy girl in a bathing suit on the beach. The text beside it, with over 16,000 hearts of approval said: And someday there will be a click. You will realize that you don't have to change. You will accept yourself, you will love yourself, you will hug yourself. You will love and be grateful for every part of your body. .⁠ One day you will look in the mirror and really believe yourself when you say, 'I love you, you are beautiful.' ⁠⁠ It all started from that day when you decided to prioritize love for yourself. an easy or quick trip. ”All this

, w doing good to ourselves by taking care of our health which is different from making us impose models of beauty and perfection.

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