I'm based in america and everything is very much about body image and being skinny. Note: I didn't say it's about being healthy, it's about being skinny. Think of the extreme example of this:anerexia. The person is skinny, but surely not healthy unfortunately. Now, it effects girls/women especially, but also men, from what I've heard.
What's the Torah's take on all of this? (I'm aware that a person needs to take care of themselves according to the Torah) How do we not get swept up in the craziness of it all? The secular ideas... I want to be healthy, I don't want to be skin and bones, but there is also the pressure to be skinny. NO, I'm not a anerexic chas v'Sh-lm but how do I not feel that this is the expectation?
thanks for all responses 
The Torah's position on this is that a person is required to take care of his health. Also, we should not submit ourselves to the latest fad-idea of what we should look like just because the advertising agencies and Hollywood decide we should.
This is one of the big problems for people living in a community where the values and culture of secular society are accepted. I mentioned a similar thing to you in
this thread. There are three things you do to help combat this Yetzer Horah:
1)
You need to understand and internalize that secular society is full of ideas, values, and culture that is very messed up. It is hard to value what secular society values as beauty on one hand and then try not to be beautiful on the other. To the extent that we understand that secular society is chock full of messed up values and ideas, it is much easier for us reject their images of what beauty is. We say "who cares what they say looks good?" But in order to really say that you need to cultivate the general attitude that just because the world say something is good / pretty / nice / moral / valuable / worthwhile does not mean it is.
2) You need to understand that this thinness image of beauty is unrealistic, unhealthy, and artificially created by advertising and modeling agencies. And you need to learn how damaging it is to those who are unfortunate enough to accept that image.
By "unrealistic" I mean that advertisers actually Photoshop images of models in order to make them appear thinner than they are. Unnaturally thin. Emaciated kind of thin. I am not exaggerating. There is talk about litigation requiring such magazine advertisements to put a notice in the picture that says, "This image has been artificially retouched." That means they want to make it illegal to give the impression that this is what the models really look like. And the illegality is not because of fraud, but because of the danger such images pose to young women in society, such as yourself, who are pressured into doing things that are unhealthy and unattainable because of them. In England, the Parliament considered completely outlawing retouched images targeting teenagers. Read up about all this and you will understand, more and more, that this pressure you are feeling is unhealthy and unrealistic. Often, you are not even competing with real women but fictitious, Photoshopped images.
3) Hang around with people who have healthy and normal ideas of what looking good is. Look for compliments from such people. Gain self-confidence about looking like a normal, healthy person. Try to not talk about looks as much as possible with those who have the harmful, unhealthy image of beauty is.
