Size Hero To Size Zero “When a man gets up to speak, people listen, then look. When a woman gets up people look, then if they like what they see, they listen." - Pauline Frederick. This defines the struggle women face day in day out with how they look and the scrutiny they face if they are too fat. An average size 10 becomes morbidly obese; a (to any normal human being) very small size 6 re-models (pardon the PUN) to being looked on as carrying a bit of excess; a perfectly acceptable size 14 doesn’t even get sniffed at. To get a better look at the problem you have to find the root of it. The media- enticing the mind, influencing the weak and controlling the masses. Thousands of articles claim size 0 as the ‘hot celeb #lifestyle’ or ‘the ideal summer body’, persuading the general public into appalling diet regime or celery and water. People insist following this impossibly inane way of losing weight however, and persist in ignoring the profound evidence of what is consistently in the papers, where young girls have found themselves in dire and desperate positions of inability to accept the way they look, despite being in a very unhealthy situation already and persist in starving their bodies of food. There is a definite need for these sorts of people to take on board the philosophy of Mowgli and Baloo of The Jungle Book, and seek the ‘bare (food) necessities of #life’. How is it that so many young girls fall prey to this vicious and controlling addiction that they feel is necessary for them to be accepted in today’s society? Who is it that has the right to decide what size you have to be to be like this? These questions become irrelevant when the prejudice is shown towards the victims of the size 0 addiction, when the real guilty parties of keeping this awful way of #life alive, are those with the power of the word and the nation at their fingertips. Call the media what you like but the way they’ve led so many young people into this devastating and unforgiving, mental illness is abysmal; ruining lives of those involved and those who have to watch it unfold. However there is always a choice! You can say what you want about the media and its influences, but ultimately, although some may feel they absolutely had to, to fit in, there is always that element of not having to do it to the extremes some people go to. The media do not forcibly grab the hand of anyone participating in the diet, but has caved in and is now reaching for the nearest Mars Duo or packet of Thai Sweet Chilli Sensations TO SHARE, and thrust it as far away from this food source as possible. No, the underlying decision in how far to take this diet, or indeed whether to do I at all, lies with the dieter. It ceases to amaze me why anyone, especially with the knowledge of the (to put it lightly) side effects attached to the size 0 diet, would want to live off a teaspoon of porridge for breakfast; a slice of cucumber for lunch and an unsalted dried, flavourless, fat-less, somehow emotionless- basically anything-less peanut for dinner, just to feel a satisfaction with yourself that will never actually come to you of being slimmer, so you keep doing it while still not looking like the ‘living skeleton’ you so badly want to be, therefore repeating the cycle until someone tells you, you are on the verge of ascending, what Led Zeppelin so famously called, the ‘stairway to heaven’. Thus finally realising you may need to get your head straight, and start eating this thing called food.