The Skinny Complex
Disclaimer: I am well aware that women who are curvy have more issues socially and are bullied far worse than I ever was. This is simply my take on my own experience and my take on the way society handles weight.
I have always been tiny. I was born at 9 pounds and then fairly quickly became underweight to the point my pediatrician had my mom putting peanut butter in my bottles ( I am convinced this is where my love for peanut butter comes from). As soon as I was able to go to school, the comments about my weight started. The earliest I can remember was in kindergarten, when I was hanging on the monkey bars and my t-shirt had crept up a little. A boy from my class informed me that my ribs were sticking out and why did they do that? He promptly told me that it was disgusting and asked me if I was anorexic. Now at age 5 I doubt he knew what that meant, and I certainly didn’t, but it was a comment that stuck in my psyche all the way to being a 22 year old woman.
The comments didn’t stop there; I was often told to just “eat a cheeseburger” and asked if I was anorexic (once people knew what this meant) and other mildly insulting things. I even had a boy my freshman year of high school ask me where my boobs were. Classy right? And the thing that always irritated me the most was that I was eating the burger. I could (and still can) finish a double-double from In n’ Out faster than anyone else I’m with. When good food is around, I can scarf it down as good as anyone else. I constantly snack and have the munchies for junk food. I have had a good metabolism that has always allowed me to eat this way. The con here that no one ever acknowledges is that I can loose weight at the drop of a hat. Many people reading this probably hate that I just said those words out loud, but many times in my life it has actually threatened my life. Whenever I have been sick, and not eating normally, I drop weight to the point of concern. When I had mono my junior year of high school, I lost weight to the point I was down to 80 pounds and it took me months and months to get back to a regular weight. When I had to switch over to a gluten free diet, I dropped several pounds again that it took me forever to gain back.
In high school, it was common practice to voice our insecurities to one another. One person would start with “I hate my nose” and then another would pipe in with “I would take your nose over my thighs any day” and the conversation would spiral, but ultimately lead to uplifting comments as we collectively assured each other we were perfect as is. That is until I piped up with any comment about anything I disliked about myself. I was met with an onslaught of “Shut up you are so tiny I don’t even want to hear it.” I wasn’t allowed to be self conscious because I weighed the least in my friend group. But what about the fact that every time I turned around, things were being posted on social media about how men wanted women with thighs they could hold on to? And hips that were thick and sexy? From the time I was 16 up until recently, I was convinced that a woman was only sexy when she had curves and cleavage, and that I would never fit into that category. I was skinny sure, but no one would ever look at me and think “sexy.”
Skinny became my identity. I was the petite, waif-like dancer with the long blonde hair. I quit voicing up my insecurities since they were clearly not valid, and I stayed skinny. Fast forward to being 22, and having gained 20 pounds in the last 8 months or so. I had had a bought of endometriosis flare up and was staying bed a lot. I was moving as little as I needed to because it hurt, and then once I was finally feeling better, finals set in and any form of exercise was no longer important. Whenever I have an endo flare, my hormones also fluctuate. Sometimes I lose weight, sometimes I gain it, but whatever happens ultimately evens out about a week after the flare. But when I noticed some of my pants felt tighter, and I noticed stretch marks forming on my thighs, I realized the weight hadn’t disappeared, but that in fact some new weight had joined it. My hips and thighs are were it all joined up and made me feel extremely disproportionate. I had only gained it there; none in my stomach or butt, maybe a little in my face but it was hard to tell. I started to notice cellulite and more stretch marks forming on my thighs despite trying to eat healthier and be more active to off set these new changes.
I know some of you are reading this and hating me yet again. 22 and just now having stretch marks and cellulite? Only gaining weight over 8 months and its only 20 pounds? I am lucky and shouldn’t be complaining. But after an entire life of not being allowed insecurities, of being told being skinny was my best asset, and being tiny becoming my whole identity, it was something that shook me to my core. My eating habits were only getting better not worse, I don’t consume a plethora of alcohol, and even though I do not work out as often as I should, I work on my feet for 6-8 hours a day. I sometimes even forget to eat because I am perpetually late and have poor time management skills. But either way, this new weight threw me off guard and made me deeply self conscious. That is until May of this year when we were allowed to start wearing shorts at work.
One of the other smaller servers (even smaller than me) pointed out to me that she was amazed I had cellulite because she was self conscious of hers since she was tiny also. We had a weird little bonding moment over this odd mix of a specific insecurity, and the feeling that we were not allowed to have these insecurities. Another female server walked passed us and told us that “Literally everyone has cellulite so calm down “ and in that moment it clicked with me: women who are told over and over again how small and perfect we are, are meant to never have a flaw. We are not meant to be the ones with stretch marks and insecurities. We are meant to shine and be the overly confident women that the women who hate themselves are supposed to aspire to be.
I am just going to go ahead and call bullshit on that whole way of thinking.
No matter if you are size 2 or 12, or any other size the fashion industry has created, there are things we love about ourselves and things we hate about ourselves. Always. Some days you may dislike things more than others, some days you may feel like a beautiful goddess (which you always are btw). But either way, you are entitled to those feelings no matter how much you weigh. Or if you always work out and eat extremely healthy. Or if you don’ work out often and eat whatever you please. You are entitled to your own insecurities.
My friends in high school never meant to be rude when they told me I didn’t have any room to talk. They simply thought I was great as is and since I was skinny, there was no reason for me to hate anything about myself. That, paired with a society that informs women the only thing that makes us valid is our looks, gave me a complex that I was perfect (or at least perceived as so) and now had to keep that up. Even if I myself thought I was vastly imperfect. I was a dancer who was also supposed to be tiny and perfect and it defined every movement and thought I had about myself.
If you were to look at me now, you most likely wouldn’t think I had gained any weight or at least not enough to make a difference. But I notice and that seems to the be part where most women get hung up. We are the first to notice when we are gaining or losing weight and depending on your goal, mortified when people notice or angry when they don’t. Really all we need to worry about is how we feel in our own skin and not worried about how other perceive us.
For me, gaining the extra weight was a good thing since I haven’t really ever been able to. It gives me a little extra to work with if I get sick or forget to eat breakfast. It is making my body a little stronger so I can start to work out more again. But even though these are all good things, it is still a foreign feeling and requires a mindset change that I have had since I was in kindergarten. Thats what it really takes for anyone to love their body, actually. A full blown mindset change. Whether you are tiny and have the “skinny complex” mindset or are curvy or are athletic or a mix of all of them, it requires you to dismantle whatever weird complex this life has given you about how you look and replace it with thoughts and feelings of love towards yourself.
Start working out, not because you need to lose weight but because you need activity to stay healthy and it will make you feel awesome when you see just what your body can do. Start eating healthier, again not to lose weight, but to fuel your mind and make you feel amazing for the rest of the day. Buy and wear clothes that make you feel great and not because anyone tells you that this specific kind of dress works for your body type. Get a hair cut you love. Wear makeup you love. Start treating yourself and your body like you love it, even if you don’t, and one day you will wake up and realize that maybe you are happier in your skin than you thought you were.
I am not completely cured and still have a ways to go. Writing this post didn’t magically make me wake up and realize that I love everything about myself and I no longer have anything bad to say about my body. (Wouldn’t it be cool if it were that easy?) It is a process, and it can take awhile. But you have to start somewhere, and trying to actively point out one thing you love about your body every time you start to have a thought about what you hate will help to counter act that (I can’t take credit for this one; it was told to me in therapy a couple years ago) and is a greta place to start. Maybe even do something totally out of your comfort zone, like a swimsuit photoshoot, and notice that it was actually pretty fun.
