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Emily Rodriguez

Professor Batty

English 101

May 8,2018

You are Perfect, Love Yourself

We are always looking at ourselves and when we look in the mirror w love what we see,

but in other cases we don’t love what we see. Rosa is one of many young adults who look in the

mirror and just see disgust. One of Rosas main struggles is her body and the way she thinks

people look at her. The judgement of others can hurt a person especially if they are insecure of

there body. Rosa for me stood out the most because of her experiences and how many people can

relate to her. For my topics I would like to write about trust, the causes of diets, self-esteem,

family situations, and no sense of belonging in the world, some people may look at this and say

that everyone can change and no one should be thinking the worse about their body or they

shouldn’t think that all people do is just look at their body.

Trust is something someone has to earn in order to be comfortable with one another. As

in Still Water Saints a book written by Alex Espinoza. “You’re thinking just because I’m fat a

guy can’t like me, right? That a guy like him can’t find me attractive?” This proves that one

little question or something that you tell a person that is not secure about their, will lead to their

feelings getting hurt easily. Rosa asked her mom you think a guy will never love me the way I

am. This proves that Rosa does not have trust in herself and needs to get approval of someone

else in order to feel better. Also, when she started to work in a grocery store. She wanted to

ignore Miguel Angel at first. In the book it does not say why she ignores him. For the way that I
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see it, it is because she is scared of what he might say to her. On another page Alex Espinoza

writes in the book Still Water Saints. One quote that surprises Rosa from Miguel is “Eat, don’t

matter if you’re heavy, Rosa You gotta eat.” What Rosa has to see that not everyone is out to get

her because the way she looks. Miguel does not care how she looks and he also notices that Rosa

is not eating that she is only drinking tea. Which can hurt her in many ways.

My next topic is about the different effects that diets have on a person’s body. There can

be positive ways a person can go on a diet. They can drink vitamins or eat small portions. But

one negative way is not getting the proper foods or not eating a lot. In the book Still Water Saints

by Alex Espinoza. Miguel notices something wrong with Rosa. One Saturday night Miguel and

Rosa were dancing on the dance floor when Miguel and I quote “Are you feeling okay” and Rosa

says “I am okay’’ she says panting. They both sit down and as you read Rosa was not feeling

okay and that is because she has not eaten ever since they got to dancing. That can cause many

disorders that are not healthy for your body. For example, some people in this case Rosa would

not eat a lot this can cause her to faint it is a sudden drop in heart rate and pressure leading to

fainting. This can cause for her or any other person to go to the hospital. There are many other

disorders which is bulimia this person either binge eats or does not eat at all which if they do eat

they take other steps to not gain weight in this step they might vomit in order to take out the food

they just eat. Also, another article that gives me facts about our bodies and how we look at our

self. It gives me another look of a disorder that I have never heard of, this one is called Body

Dysmorphic Disorder, this is a disorder that when humans see themselves in the mirror all they

can imagen is ugliness and all they see for hours is flaws that they might not have or they like to

obsess or they try to conceal things that they want no one to see(Furnham). There is a second

disorder that is put in this article which is Anorexia Nervosa, which is similar to body
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dysmorphic disorder. Anorexia nervosa is a disorder that characterizes a person that there fear is

that all they do is gain pounds and all they see is fatness. But in reality, they are under weight

and they don’t see that and that is when they lean to diets.

Self Esteem can be looked as a negative or positive outcome. This article is based on how

women and adolescent girls look at them self’s and what key factors lead them to this point. As

in one article states “86% of all women are dissatisfied with their bodies and want to lose

weight.” Some women are not even close to over weight there are some cases where they are

skinny and they see them self’s as fat. In the scholarly article that I found there was a survey

conducted to young adults. Where on one side which was the girls side. It shows that only girls

associated body dissatisfaction with the concept of self- esteem. Now as for male’s self-esteem

was not affected by body dissatisfaction. In this article it does show that in the years that young

adults hit their puberty that is when they start to learn about eating disorders. Also, as for men

they rather gain weight so they can gain muscles. Also, there are two different meanings to

underweight. The two differences are that when men hear underweight they think it’s bad and

not good, but as for women they see it as perfect that they are underweight. “4.4% of the women

they studied wanted to become bigger compared with 46.8% of the men.” There is a big

difference between how women want to see themselves and how men would rather gain the

weight and then they want to lose it(Negative Body Image).

Now for my other topic it is about family. Family is something that everyone has to have

in their life because that is what you learn new things from they help you grow. Also, there are

some negatives family can hurt you they think they are helping but in reality, they are not. In one

article there are some consequences that mothers pass down to their kids. As my third article this

is based more on the psychological outlook. As it states “We may think that children whose
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parents were overweight might have it easier when it comes to body image, because their parents

would empathize and not make them feel like they need to be thin.” But in reality, “Overweight

parents often don’t want their children to experience the pressures and judgments that they may

have faced. (Negative Body Image)” As for these two quotes this shows me the two different

views between two different peoples. Kids might look at their parents and if their parents are

overweight you would think that they would stay at a normal weight but if you see at the

statistics it is the other way around. The parents try to change so that their kids won’t have to

pass through what they passed through in their life. With this type of attitudes, it shows kids to

worry about what their parents are going to say about their weight gain. Another quote is

“Whether it’s parents or spouses, when we don’t feel seen and valued by our families, we may

begin to feel like there’s something wrong with us, some fatal flaw that has extinguished our

family members’ desire to be part of our lives.(Rosen)” This fall into the Rosa and her mother

situation since Rosa mother is always pushing in losing weight but also this weighs a lot Rosa

sister. Both mother and sister are always trying to push Rosas buttons and making her feel bad

about herself.

As for my last paragraph it is no sense of belong in the world. Rosa is always being

asking herself why she can’t lose more than five pounds even though she is drinking tea. That for

me it shows me that she is losing all the patience with her self she does not know what to do

anymore. This topic for me can lead into many different possibilities but one main point is

suicide. A lot of people don’t see that anything can happen and suicide has been a very big

objective throughout the years. Many famous people have died from this like recently we lost a

singer named Avicii. Suicide is not a joke some people think that it is a game or they still make

fun of this.
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Rosa for me is one of the strongest character in this book, she did lose courage in herself

but she never did anything that can hurt her body really badly. For Rosa is someone that

everyone should learn about she is someone incredible. She never believed in herself, she always

thought that no man will ever love her. Rosa thought like her mom, her mom always told her no

one will ever love a fat person. Society needs to learn what are all the negatives and positives

about body image. People are always trying to bring down other people, they always troll them

on social media they even talk about them behind there backs. I know this is a topic that is going

to get boring but no one should ever lose interest and should always be appreciated.
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Work Cited

Espinoza, Alex. Still Water Saints. A Random House , 2007.

Rosen , Emily. “Body Image: Is It Influenced By Your Family?” The Institute for

the Psychology of Eating, psychologyofeating.com/body-image-influenced-family/.

Furnham, Adrian, et al. “Body Image Dissatisfaction: Gender Differences in Eating

Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Reasons for Exercise.” The Journal of Psychology, vol. 136, no. 6,

2002, pp. 581–596., doi:10.1080/00223980209604820.

“Negative Body Image - Understanding and Overcoming.” Center for Change, 15 Mar.

2017, centerforchange.com/battling-bodies-understanding-overcoming-negative-body-images/.