- I do have body issues, and I do want to talk about those issues with my friends.
- Whenever someone says, "You look great, and I only hate you a little bit," my feelings are hurt.
- "Skinny" girls aren't skinny because we want to make women who aren't "skinny" feel bad.
- Even though I don't diet, I do watch what I eat, and I do eat healthily.
- I spend as much time thinking about food and my body as you do.
- I think I look awful in a bathing suit, and I'm not thrilled with the state of my abs.
- I don't think I'm skinny enough.
- I have a skewed body image, as do most "skinny" girls. Every time someone pays me a genuine compliment (and really, I feel like those are rare as most compliments include the statement "I hate you!" which I am meant to take as a joke), I think to myself, "Really, that person clearly doesn't see what I see. I think I could stand to lose a few pounds, and I really need to do more crunches."
*I think this will be a series of posts.
3 comments:
YES!!! Thank you so much for speaking up! You know that I hear you!
Sigh...
In my case I actually grew up with my mom and other people thinking and saying that I was too skinny which was awful. (my mom actually took me to different doctors to try and see if I had a problem, like hyperthyroidism).
It was pretty good for my body image when from 7th grade through high school I had three best friends who were as skinny and even more flat-chested than I was. It made me feel a tiny bit better.
Two of them, my twin friends, have since had breast enhancement surgery -- it was that bad! -- and they've actually showed me the excellent, very discrete results, I think you remember this post of mine, but you can see here).
In any case. Since I did not grow up in the U.S. (now obesity is a big problem in Brazil, but it didn't use to be), I never faced the hateful (if "playful") comments that you had to face, but recently I've been getting some of those. Even from women whom I would never consider fat.
And then there was the time I think I wrote about in my post when during graduate school a doctor "made me" go to a nutritionist. Yikes!
I would very much appreciate your series of posts if you get to writing it! So, please do speak up! Thank you!
Was too lazy to login to comment sooner. I like this post. I was skinny girl (still am, always will be short girl), in college. So many "friends" would say "I hate you. You can do whatever you want and not exercise or diet." Even now when I talk about body image in class the students (female) jump on me when I say thin girls have body image issues too. One girl was visible upset this semester. I must have been lying, saying that it's not easier for the skinny girl because only fat girls have it hard. Having been both, I think both struggle.
I find the fact that we all judge one another the hardest to deal with. We all have our own scars, our own battles. I can explain very clearly why I think I'm not thin enough, why I look in the mirror and see someone who is 10 pounds heavier than she is, why I feel compelled to suck in my stomach when out in public. But because I wear a size 1, those feelings are somehow less valid than those of a person who wears a larger size. Ultimately, I get it. I'm thin, so I must have it easier. It's not true, but it makes sense to people who aren't me. I've thought it about other people too--you're tall, so you have no idea what it's like to be short; your parents never divorced, so you don't know what it's like to have a hard childhood. It's not true, but it made me feel better about myself. So we need to get past thinking no one understands us and realize we're all much, much more alike than we realize.
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