Diary of a Gen Z Student: The perfect body is a myth — wear your bikini this summer

Jane Cowan: 'You don’t have to skip meals or punish yourself in the name of ‘discipline’ to go to the beach in a bikini. You actually just need to wear a bikini and find a beach to do that.'

I remember girls in school comparing the sizes of their school uniforms in the changing rooms before PE. The goal was to wear the smallest size possible. It seemed completely normal.

From a painfully young age, we’re taught that thinness is desirable. It’s in magazines and films, walking down runways, and filling up our social media feeds. It’s so deeply ingrained in girls in particular that your best self will be your smallest size. 

The messaging is woven so insidiously into everything we consume. It’s in the influencers selling supplements to combat ‘bloating’, and it’s in your relative wearing their daily step count like a badge of honour, and it’s only really seeing clothes modelled on one body type.

As a woman, you’ll be sold on the idea that, if you run your body like a military operation, you can keep out the tide of change, keep your waist small, and your arms thin. It’s a harmful message to send to anyone. 

But when I think of girls in my class discussing their diets during lunchtime, I can’t help but feel so sad for them because there were very few people telling us that a body going through puberty is supposed to change. And that your body will probably continue to change in different ways throughout your life. No one told us that being happy with the vessel you inhabit was an option.

As all of our social media feeds begin to fill up with content around bikini bodies and shredding for our summer holidays, as they always do at this time of year, it feels like an important perspective to add to the conversation. Being okay with your body is always an option. 

You don’t have to skip meals or punish yourself in the name of ‘discipline’ to go to the beach in a bikini. You actually just need to wear a bikini and find a beach to do that. 

Jane Cowan: 'When I was in secondary school, I remember girls in my year comparing the sizes of their school uniforms in the changing rooms before PE.' Picture: iStock.

Because I can guarantee that when you’re on that beach, you’ll see cellulite, stretch marks, stomach rolls, and every other normal variation soaking up the sun. Life is already going to be difficult. You don’t need to add a tirade against your physical form into the mix.

I am so frustrated by the content that I see on social media around weight loss. People who run Skinnytok social media accounts are often aware of how toxic their messaging is. Telling their young followers that, if you go to a restaurant, you couldn’t possibly finish your meal. Most of this content is produced by adults who should, and often do, know better.

Particular accounts that post videos with advice for losing weight are so often posting obvious rage bait. They know their advice is extreme and unhealthy, and being consumed by vulnerable teenage minds. 

They’ll brand themselves as a ‘skinny legend’ or ‘skinny queen’, as if we should all be tying our identities up in our weight. I’ve even seen videos of women talking about why people need to ‘act their weight’, describing how women who weigh more than they would like to, should be aware of their inferiority, as she perceives it.

Social media wasn’t a positive place when I was 14. And now that I’m a little older, I can see the effect that all of the narratives around weight have had on so many of us. I genuinely worry about what it is like to be a teenager right now, to watch your body’s normal development, and to move away from the standards of thinness you’ve been taught to covet.

I’m disappointed that people are still being pressured into wasting their time and energy trying to fit into an ideal that is unattainable by design. The line is always being moved, just enough so that we can’t see the gaping hole at the centre of it all: the ‘perfect’ body is a figment of imagination. 

It’s there to keep you engaging with someone’s TikTok account, to buy their overpriced supplement, and to buy a piece of clothing that might make you look like the edited and curated image that advertises it. I wish I’d figured out sooner that you don’t have to buy everything that you’re being sold.

I wish someone could tell all of the 14-year-old girls in my class that confidence is cooler than anything. And that your body isn’t a problem to get to the bottom of.

And that feeling comfortable in your own skin doesn’t have a weight limit. And that you should just wear the bloody bikini. It looks great.