Media and Body Image: How the World Steals Our Time and Creativity While We Count Our Calories
Ever feel like chasing beauty is a second job you never signed up for—but still clock into daily? You’re not imagining it. Gen Z femmes are being told to “love your body” while being served a thousand filtered reasons not to. And while we’re counting calories, comparing angles, and editing stretch marks, guess what we’re not doing? Writing poems. Starting businesses. Living our damn lives.
This post is not about self-love as a moodboard aesthetic. It’s about survival in a man’s world. Let’s expose how body shame eats our time, dulls our brilliance, and keeps us too preoccupied to rebel. It's been happening to the women around us for generations before us but that can start to end now.
This change comes from our refusal to shrink—literally and figuratively.
The Media’s Mirror: Distorted Reflections, Real Damage
We were taught: “Beauty is pain.”
Translation? Women’s discomfort is profitable. Our dissatisfaction is good for business.
Here’s the truth:
Media doesn’t just reflect culture—it manufactures insecurity and sells it back to us as aspiration, in just 5 minutes of exposure. [Source]
A huge percentage of women ages 18–30 report avoiding activities—like going to the beach, speaking on camera, attending school or applying for jobs—because of body dissatisfaction. That’s not vanity. That’s systemic harm. [Source]
By age 13, 53% of American girls already say they’re unhappy with their bodies, rising to 78% by age 17. [Source]
Half of all ads targeting women center on weight loss. What if half of those told us we were powerful instead?
About 1 in every 3.8 TV commercials includes attractiveness messaging; viewers see more than 1,800 beauty-related ads per year. [Source]
Increasingly, GLP-1 weight-loss drug ads like Ozempic and “skinny pill” campaigns are targeting young women—boosting harmful diet culture and eating disorder risk. [Source]
Beauty Standards: The Silent Time Thief
Let’s do the math.
Hours spent editing selfies.
Workouts that start from shame, not strength.
Outfit changes until you cry.
Days skipped, moments missed, joy deferred.
Whole summers erased because you didn’t feel “bikini ready.”
Phone storage full of photos you hated yourself in.
Friend hangs canceled because your skin wasn’t “clear enough.”
Every creative idea that died in the mirror.
That time adds up. And so does what it costs us.
A study from the UK, cited by Diet Chef, reports that the average woman spends about 17 years of her life dieting—losing and regaining weight roughly nine times between ages 18 and 82. [Source]
What would you be doing, making, creating, enjoying; if you weren’t busy calculating your worth in calories and inches?
Patriarchy and the Mental Load of “Perfection”
This obsession didn’t appear out of nowhere.
Beauty standards are a control tactic—one of patriarchy’s most successful weapons. Because a woman too busy monitoring her thighs doesn’t have the energy to burn down systems.
If we’re shrinking ourselves to fit the frame, we’re not holding the camera.
Let’s stop playing along.
Reframe It. Reclaim It.
What we were taught:
Your body is a project. You are a work-in-progress.
What’s actually true:
Your body is not a problem to solve. It’s the home of your voice, your joy, your rage. It’s incredible and miraculous in its engineering if you only start to notice. It’s already enough.
Let’s Get Loud About It
Journal Prompts to Break the Loop:
What’s the earliest memory you have of feeling “not enough” physically? Whose voice was that really?
List 5 things you could do this week instead of criticizing your body.
What doesn’t make you feel beautiful—and why do you keep returning to it?
Action Steps That Actually Shift Things:
Unfollow one account today that makes you feel like a before-and-after project. Replace it with someone creating art, joy, or truth.
Start a “Mirrorless Hour” once a week. No cameras, no reflections—just movement, music, life.
Paint. Dance. Write something raw. Make something ugly on purpose. Let your creativity be the loudest thing in the room.
Final Word: You Were Never Meant to Be Small
The world wants you distracted. It wants you docile. It wants you shrinking.
But you? You were born to disrupt.
So stop counting calories. Start counting all the ways you’ve shown up for yourself, in a world that profits when you don’t. This isn’t about vanity—it’s about power. And you have more than they ever wanted you to believe.
Let them deal with the fullness of your brilliance. Let your body be the place rebellion begins.
