I've noticed a lot of posts on Facebook lately that seem to draw this definitive line in the sand between skinny women vs curvy women. Currently, the curvy women are winning, with all their cute and easy to share pictures depicting bigger women in a flattering light while making anyone on the skinnier side of things look like anorexic, insecure freaks.
I don't understand this phenomena. I am 5'5 and I currently weigh 110, 10 lbs underweight for my height. My doctor wants me to get up to 120, but after having me as a patient for years, she understand that I physically cannot put the weight on and she has told me that I'm perfectly healthy at the weight that I'm at and that it does not affect my physical health in any way. But the internet would like me to believe that there's something wrong with that. That I'm some sort of outcast, that I have image problems and spend hours every day contemplating way to make myself skinnier than I am and figuring out clever way to hide throwing my food up.
And on the other side of things, skinny women are constantly criticizing heavier women for eating too much and not being able to control their food intake. The "typical" cycle of "I'm sad because I'm fat so I eat food that only makes me fatter." Any woman who is on the heavier end of her ideal weight range or past her ideal weight is some kind of Little Debbie eating monster who cannot control her impulses towards food and spends all day in the candy isle and at all you can eat buffets. She is painted as insecure and will yell at anyone who says anything that can be twisted into a fat joke.
I'm at a loss for where these stereotypes came into being. Yes, I will admit that some skinny girls do in fact have eating disorders to stay that skinny, but I will also know that heavy girls are actually more likely to be anorexic than thin ones. Under eating is as much of an eating disorder as over eating, both of these need to be brought to light and women (and men) who suffer from both desperately need to get help as they can both can kill you.
But what I am really confused about is why there is this battle between the two. There are pros and cons to both ends of the spectrum. I can wear teeny tiny mini skirts because I have teeny tiny legs but I can't strut my stuff around in a corset because I do not have what it takes to fill one out properly. When I wear shirts designed to show off cleavage, I look ridiculous. A well cooked steak has a better chance of surviving a pack of hungry dogs than I have of looking good in a pair of apple bottom jeans. And there's about the same chance of a heavy woman being able to rock some daisy dukes and a belly shirt without looking foolish.
What has happened to the tolerance of our society where if you're different from anyone, you're a freak and anyone like you is a freak and there's something wrong. Eat more, you skinny mutant! Eat less, you fat monstrosity! When did this become an acceptable practice in our lives? I can look at someone who has curves and fully appreciate their shape but I can also look at someone who is super skinny and see their grace. Why is this such a difficult concept for people to grasp? That beauty has many forms. Are trees only visually appealing during one season of the year? Or is there beauty to be seen year round? Does the same not apply to women? Can their physical forms not be appreciated in varying sizes? Do we HAVE to definitely say that there is only one attractive body type?
I like to think that the different body types that women have can only fully be appreciated because of each other. Like with foods, you can't fully appreciate sweet until you've also had spicy, bitter until you've had sweet. They each have their own wonderful qualities that make them what they are and they each need to be appreciated for what they are. Yes, we all have our own tastes. I prefer peaches to plums and I tend to favor cherries over grapes but that doesn't mean I'm going to go around saying that plums and grapes are awful fruits and should be shunned from society.
Us women are the same way. I've met telephone poles with more curves than I have and some guys still find me attractive. Some women have more curves than Lombard Street in San Francisco while others still have a rounder shape. Some of us are all legs, some have longer torsos. Tiny and tall, hourglass shaped, thick and thin. They're all acceptable and beautiful in their own way. And if you like one more than another, that's fine. It's to be expected. But is it really necessary to criticize, bash and tear apart the ones that are not your own?
Word!
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