Tags
body issues, clothing, female body, health, inspiration, inspirational quotes, life, quote, skinny, skinny women, strong opinions, thin, weight, weight issue, women, writing
My sister is a size XXS – and she prides herself in this. Everything she owns or wears has to be the smallest it can be, down to her waist size, shoe size, and even her finger size.
We were both looking at rings one time and she asked me what my finger size was. My finger size is already pretty small – a size 6 – but after I told her this, I spotted a smug look on her face when she told me her finger was a lot smaller than mine – a size 4. I thought, ridiculous. The telling look on her face and her matter-of-fact tone told me she ACTUALLY thought that she was better than me because she was smaller size. She also came to assume I wanted to be as small as she is. I remember she would tell me I couldn’t share her clothes because I was unfortunately bigger than her. I began to wonder, when did people define smaller as better?? If you really want to compete with me, there are a multitude of things we can compare with, such as our physical abilities, our musical abilities, or our technical abilities. Of course, none of these would be a fair way to judge a person as being better than the other, but then again, neither does size.
The example I have given reflects the situation we have in our society. So many women are obsessed with being thin that many women PRIDE themselves over how skinny they are. I personally don’t think there is anything prideful about having to ignore the aching feeling in your stomach that is your hunger, or overworking your body in an attempt to slim down in order to fit that extra small dress. There are many many beautiful women in this world who don’t wear a size 0, but these women are often not portrayed to be beautiful in our media. Unfortunately, women are so accustomed to being bombarded with radio ads, tv ads, or magazines that encourage them to be thin, that we begin to think thin is the NORMAL.
Let me tell you, it is NOT normal when we have only one, single option to work toward.
There is a very strong association with a women’s sense of self-worth and with looking a particular way. I have met many many wonderful women with lots of redeeming qualities, but there is a very sad characteristic among them. Between the wonderful conversations and witty stories we share, an alarming number of them will say things like, “I need to work out to lose my tummy,” or “My legs are too fat, I don’t want to wear skirts,” or, “I shouldn’t eat that, I don’t want to get any fatter,” And I wonder, where does this stem from?
A few years ago, I was shopping with a male friend of mine whom I had a crush on, and I went to try on a sleeveless dress. For the past few weeks, I had been attending some bootcamp classes and I was happy because my arms were getting more toned from all the weights and the push-ups I was doing. After I came out of the change room with the cute dress on, my friend told me that I should stop working out because I was getting .. ahem .. muscular. At the time, I didn’t have the self confidence I do now to say something of worth back to him. In fact, I was extremely hurt and for the following few months, I was scared to work out because I didn’t want to look “muscular.” Before I knew it, I had developed more self-image issues from that one stupid comment that someone so unworthy of me had brought up. I think everyone has their own conceptions of what “beautiful” looks like. For my friend, a wispy thin girl with arms much smaller than his might have been his cup of tea, but it wasn’t his call to tell me how he thinks I should look.
How many more women have been affected by these sorts of opinionated comments from men or other women? And for the men reading this, how many of the women close to you have made self-degrading comments about their size or their weight despite how you think they look fine they way they are? Do any of you find it puzzling?
To conclude, I want to say that men have a huge impact on the way women feel about themselves. This seems like a very strange thing to say – that men can play a part in defining a woman’s sense of self worth, but in this society where women feel they are never thin enough, your comments can either reinforce this unhealthy thinking or help bring out the best in them without size as a determining factor of who they are.
As E.E. Cummings once said,
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting
We won’t have a problem with ourselves until we are consistently told time and time again that there is something wrong with us. Just the same way we doubt our ideas on what we already know when people tell us over and over again that what we know is wrong. Then we become brainwashed.