Perfect butts and Pinterest

So on Pinterest, I have this one friend who is constantly pinning different exercise pins. Every single day when I go on, she's got about 30 more. This may be a slight exaggeration, but only very slight.

Needless to say, she probably has an eating disorder. Especially since the occurrences of these pin rampages always seems to coincide with difficult breakups.

The theme of pins I seemed to notice today was how to exercise to get the perfectly shaped butt. For her, the perfect butt is the "bubble butt."

This is the bubble butt:  

Also, she's probably sticking her butt out, making it look bigger than it really is.

For others, the necessary butt workout can be the "bikini butt," the "Jessica Beil butt," the "tight" butt, the "LeAnn Rimes bikini butt," and so on. She even pinned this ridiculous-looking chart: 

Please, no one take this seriously.

There are so many good reasons all of these pins shouldn't exist, and my poor friend is the exact example of why. She is 22, and despite what she thinks, gorgeous. She is never lacking for male attention or compliments from others. Yet, she doesn't understand that she is perfect the way she is. She spends hours a day at the gym, puts herself on many different kinds of unnecessary diets, including the "military" diet, and never ever feels good about herself. After she moved out of the house we were sharing, I threw away a few years' worth of about three different health magazines. But she doesn't seem to realize that all of this, on top of about 300 Pinterest links to workout websites, can be seriously dangerous and harmful to her. 

And really, who wants to live their life that way? She is of average height and weight. There is nothing "fat" about her, especially given all the muscle she gains by exercising such an excessive amount. I hope I don't offend anyone by saying this, but I've always called the "bubble butt" the "black butt," because the only people I knew who had them were black (or Greek, actually). The point I'm trying to make by saying that is that butts are genetic, natural, biological, whatever. You probably can't get the bubble butt, or Jessica Beil's butt, or whomever's, because your butt is your butt. 

I'm currently trying to work up the courage to tell this friend that I am worried about her. But in the meantime, I wanted to tell you all how sick I am of "thinspo," and of hearing women call themselves fat. Please, everyone, work on loving the body you are in. Trying this hard to achieve a body that you are not biologically made for is only going to make you unhappy. Changing yourself will not make you happy - only accepting yourself and loving your body for all of its supposed imperfections can do that.