I have a confession to make to skinny girls.
Some of you are my friends, family, coworkers, fellows, acquaintances. And mentally, I haven’t been very nice to you lately. But let me make this clear–it’s not because of anything that you did or anything you are.
I’ve been stuck inside my own dysmorphia for the past few days, maybe even the whole past week. My own hyperawareness of inner monologue toward my own body shape and size and being has made me equally hyperaware of how you exist, too.
My self-conscious attitude toward my own body, and thinking that my body shape meant something bad about me has, on more than one occasion, made me wish I could be, look, and eat like you. I have resented you for living in your own realness, while struggling to live in mine.
Shame is a bitch. That’s one thing I know for sure. When I spiraled out in shame these past few days, I could feel the insidiousness of ED thoughts inside me. The more aware I was of the physical space my body occupied, the bloating, the urgency to exercise and sweat it all out; the more aggressively I had to work to come back down to earth and recognize the origin of these thoughts.
Since I started shopping in the plus sized section at Forever 21 a few weeks ago, I have gone through many phases of attitude–from “who cares” to “I’m angry that my existence is relegated to a corner of this store while the skinny girls get to take up the whole damn space.”
But I have had to realize that this has nothing to do with you. In some cases, it doesn’t even have anything to do with me.
The idea that shopping in the plus size section of any store inherently means something about me is a false belief. One that vanity sizing, diet culture, body dysmorphia and my own disordered thinking patterns have constructed for me. The way that sizes are constructed hurts not only plus-sized women, but all of us. It was discovered a few months ago that American Eagle jeans are actually mis-sized to make women feel like they are “larger” than they are in actuality. Body dysmorphia has become not only a pervasive disorder, but a business model.
I don’t have to explain to anyone how dangerous this is. I don’t have to explain to you that the thin ideal hurts you as much as it hurts me–because the pressure to stay that way or be anything else but small is so real. And for 5% of women, thinness is just in their genetics.
I feel the need to personally apologize for the fact that so much of reclaiming body positivity has become about creating a narrative that says curvy women are the ones with “real” bodies. That must make y’all feel like sh*t. You aren’t made of plastic just because you’re flat chested, bony, or thigh-gapped by nature.
The same ideal that pushes size-4-that’s-actually-a-0 and the same mentality that constructed bulls*t songs like “All About that Bass” is what pits us against each other. It’s what makes you afraid of looking anything like me, as if the worst thing you could possibly be is chunky, thick, and a little squishy. It puts fear into you that you could “end up” like one of us.
This is the same ideal that doesn’t realize that it doesn’t take being underweight or even thin to have a full-scale eating disorder (i.e. me). The same system that allows me to feel invalidated as a person recovering from an ED even though I have restricted and exercise purged on and off for years, despite my body shape and type. It’s what keeps me resenting you every time I feel self-conscious or I’m in my disordered thinking. Because I have been conditioned to think that the only “right” way to be is thin, small, quiet, polite, and afraid.
But I am none of these things.
Summer is particularly difficult on my body image. Being eating disordered and dysmorphic means I have mixed feelings about myself on the regular. Some days, I am proud of my thickness and my stretch marks and the lack of space between my legs. Add humidity, however, and constantly peeling my thighs apart gets frustrating after a while. It ain’t my body’s fault, though, and it’s certainly not yours.
Learning to love myself doesn’t mean I have to dislike other people for how they exist in the world. It just means I personally have a lot more work to do unlearning the trash that media, capitalist consumer structure, and pretend “concern” over the state of fat girls’ “health” is doing to divide us. We are worth a lot more than the men and institutions that believe they are truly special for accepting us as if anyone’s validation is a prerequisite to our loving ourselves, “curvy” or otherwise. (Seriously…I’d offer the guy in that article a cookie if I had one to waste that I wanted to share with him).
Skinny girls are some of the raddest, baddest and most resilient people I know. Who they are, how they are, is beautiful. They undergo the same pressures to be perfect as any of us. I’m no longer in a space where I want to exist as they are, or shame them for existing as they do; because who each of us are is just fine.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”
-Marianne Williamson
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Instagram: @caitisrecovering
Twitter: @caitsrecovering
Email: caitisrecovering@gmail.com
Royally Incomplete 