She jams her fist down her throat, her knuckles pressing hard against the roof of her mouth. She hunches and gags but tries to keep quiet as her day’s intake pours into the porcelain toilet. Her knees are cold against the linoleum and her fingers smell of vomit but she continues to force any leftover calories out of her body. Her throat starts to sting as the acidic yellow bile flushes towards her lips. Tears drip from her sockets as she exhales and gently lays her head on the toilet’s rim. At least she was able to enjoy some food today. While standing in the mirror, her tiny frame seems fat and ugly. She’s disgusted.

Young eyes stare into the television at perfectly molded bodies. Fashion models and celebrities grace the red carpet, wrapped in Dior and Chanel. Their size two frames magically hold up C-cup breasts and ‘apple bottoms.’ Boys drool over their fantasy women while girls question their fates as ‘normal’ sized people—well-educated, intriguing, outgoing, funny, kind-hearted, optimistic women. But the fear remains. Without the stereotypical “beach bod“ they’re doomed to a life of insecurity.

Wal-Mart and McDonalds reside in every American town. The excess of cheap goods, weekend bargains, and dollar menus drives our economy. Corporate restaurants dish up colossal quantities of food—the larger the deal the happier the patron. Dumpsters overflow with half-eaten hamburgers and pounds of pasta. The garbage rots while Americans continuously complain their abs aren’t made of steel. America preaches to be heroin skinny but contradicts itself by promoting excess in every way possible.

Holocaust survivor Gloria Lyon remembers her days without the privilege of food or sterile water. Surviving seven different concentration and death camps, Lyon now dedicates her life to ingraining the memory of the Holocaust.

She remembers her life as a teenager in Auschwitz. Naked and cold, she was packed like cattle into a boxed truck. The officer kept his eyes on the truck’s floor and quietly requested that anyone who wished jump off the back. The large grey cattle boxes were inscribed with fingernails and gouges in the concrete—the gas chambers await at the truck’s destination. She leaned over the end, leapt and fell into an icy ditch. She waited for days in the freezing hole, running toward the camp in the night and stole a dirty cloth dress from a corpse.

As she tells her story, her tattooed number shows—A 6374—and she reminds the audience of the beauty of life. “If anyone feels unattractive or overweight just remember that if some had been heavier they could have lived longer,” says Lyon. “More would have survived.”

People strive to be aesthetically beautiful, but within varying cultures the definition of beauty often oscillates. In Somalia, for example, large men and women are well-respected; fat is a sign of affluence. Throughout history, heavy-set people were dignified and powerful. If thin is the only acceptable image of beauty, a country thrives on excess. If fat is the image of beauty, poverty floods the nation.

“Only the rich had access to enough food to gain large amounts of weight during most of human history,” says Dr. David Cummings, an obesity researcher at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Healthcare System and the University of Washington. “There were obese people all the way down the ages in the upper classes. And fat was often revered as a sure sign of good health and prosperity.”

In our culture it is hardest to be thin. To be considered an attractive American, a person ironically has to be as un-American as possible. Many countries don’t have the privilege to choose.

Off the coast of Brazil lies the Island of Flowers. Jorge Furtado’s film documents a community living in poverty. Villagers rely solely on hills of garbage as their source of food. Women in tattered cloth accompany their husbands and children, lining the gates surrounding the dump. Hoards of pigs are let in first as the small island’s economy relies on the production of livestock. The hungry children watch as the hogs rummage through the piles, eating most of the edible cabbage and vegetables. The plump animals are fed and the gates now open for the starving families who live there. Mothers fill their skirts and bags with half-eaten and rotten tomatoes, smashed heads of cabbage, and leftover scraps; all the edible food is contaminated and full of bugs, but their families are hungry.

The perpetual cycle of desiring unattainable beauty—bony cheeks, long necks, no hips, and washboard abs—exists in America. A victim of a death camp or a starving child off the coast of Brazil wants nothing more than a plate of food, while the poor in America want nothing more than a slender well-toned body—because that represents wealth. In this country, money coincides with happiness.