We need to burst the Park City bubble. The idea that problems which affect the rest of the world and don’t affect Park City is wrong. The issue of a negative body image is very real at Park City High School and it directly affects many of the students. From a survey taken from Park City students, 83% said they don’t feel like their body is good enough for society’s standards. But what can PCHS do about this issue, and why is this problem so prevalent in the community?

Since Park City is such a wealthy community, the issue is heightened. According to one Park City High School student, “I feel like it has to do with wealth a little bit, like we’re kind of like this upperclass town and society. Which I think leads people into, you know, really superficial things, like how they look. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I think people can really get caught up with it.”  And this is a shared opinion throughout the student body.

The fact that Park City is such a well off and athletic comnunity really does exaggerate the problem. This is because many people have the nicest clothes, the newest technology, and the thinnest bodies. It makes people who have completely normal bodies self concious. It’s even worse for people who first move here.  A student being interviewed said that when she switched schools to one in the Park City area it was “…Like feeling like I wasn’t good enough.”

In the same survey as mentioned before, 56.7% said that they had been harassed or bullied for their body type. This is a frightening statistic to think about because in Park City we think that we don’t have a bully problem, but we do. It’s a shared opinion for Park City High School students that there is not enough awareness for bullying, but that’s a completely seperate problem.

Another concerning statistic taken from the same poll is that 33.3% of the students polled said that they had participated in bullying or harassing someone for their body directly or indirectly. And most of this was through gossip, which once again proves that bullying is still a big problem at PCHS. Additionally, 26.7% of the respondees said that they currently have an eating disorder. This may come as a surprise to you or it might not. For most, it doesn’t.

This is because, as mentioned before, Park City is such a wealthy community and it may seem like everyone has a perfect life. Everyone has the best of everything, including the ideal body, or so it would seem. But in all honesty, “perfection” doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist because there are so many ways to interpret it that there is no way to settle in on one definition, so if you think your body is ugly, it may seem flawless to someone else.

So how should Park City High School deal with this problem? The best way is through awareness and knowledge of the issue, which there isn’t much of.  There is a lot that needs to be done to combat body negativity at PCHS, but just a little needs to be done to spread body positivity throughout the school.