Why we should love all body types--even the skinny girls

The most recent full-body shot taken of me--not even two weeks ago.

I'll warn you that this is quite possibly the longest blog post I've ever written.  But, I think it's important.  I’ve actually been noticing this for a long time, but I’ve always been afraid to say anything about it.  (I know, what a strange feeling for me.  I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been afraid to say something.)  But my sweet friend Sami posted a Tweet about it, and I was completely shocked that someone had the guts to do it, so I decided that it was okay for me to say something.  I responded to the Tweet, and then was inspired to write a Facebook status, but as usual when I’m ranting, Facebook decided it was too long for a status. This blog post turned out to be way longer than I originally planned, but oh well. Here goes.

I’m five foot one.  According to my doctor, I'm small-boned.  This is not due to osteoporosis or some other condition.  I’m just small.  My bones are small, my muscles are small, even my mouth is small.  (Figuratively, it’s huge, but that’s another subject.)  My father is only five foot eleven, and my mother is five foot three.  I will never be a tall or muscular person.  My genetics just say, “I know you wish you didn’t have to wear heels everywhere, but you’re tiny.  Deal with it.”

Up until I started college, I heard statements like this constantly:

“Ugh, you’re so small.  Eat a sandwich.”

“Real women have curves, Sarah.”

“No wonder you get cold so easily.”

“You need some meat on those bones!”

Despite being a size 0 to 3 for most of my high school career, I always felt fat.  I realize now I was actually underweight during times.  In high school, the most I ever weighed was 108 pounds, and the least I ever weighed was 93 pounds.  Still, I managed to convince myself that I was obese. I always said, “The scales must be wrong.  Yes, every single scale in the world is wrong.  I must weigh much more than that.”  I found myself lying about my weight in my head, actually believing that I weighed much more.  While people were telling me to eat a sandwich (which isn’t even the optimal weight-gain food, by the way, so I don’t understand that at all), I felt guilty every time I thought about eating.  Perhaps the most puzzling part of my thought process is that I always viewed my sweet older sister as having the perfect body—yet we were usually about the same weight.  We even shared clothes (and still do, when we visit each other).  How does that make sense?

But when I went to college, I actually started to really gain weight.  I guess it was the cafeteria food, plus the fact that college students are broke but still insist on eating all the time, resulting in a diet of Ramen noodles, Dunkin Donuts coffee, any fast food chain’s dollar menu, and vending machine candy.  I gained the freshman fifteen in my first semester.  I still wasn’t the size of an elephant, but my jeans no longer fit.

And then I met a whole new different type of criticism.

“Damn, Sarah, are you really going to eat all of that?”

“Look at that ass jiggle!”

“Are those love handles I see?”

Granted, a lot of these comments came from my own mouth, but they also came from friends and even family.  Fifteen pounds may not sound like a lot of weight, but when you stand at five foot one, even one pound shows on your midsection quickly.  And I started to hate myself.  Yes, I hated my body for not looking like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, but I really started to hate the girl who lives inside this body.  I constantly punished myself for my love of food.  I’m thoroughly a Southern girl who loves her fried food and syrupy-sweet tea, but I didn’t feel like this was okay.  My sense of self-worth became tied to my body image.

This isn’t a post to make you feel sorry for me.  I’m not a victim of bullying.  I can handle criticism.  In fact, I’m here to tell you that I did handle the criticism.  I decided that I was sick of hating my body, so I started dieting.  And exercising.  I like everything to be fried, and I love carbs more than I love most people, but I avoided all of that.  I started eating certain healthy foods I absolutely hate.  I started jogging and doing various exercise routines I found on Pinterest.  I even started doing jumping jacks when I was in public and was forced to wait in a line or something.  Yes, it earned me some funny looks, but it burned calories.

And I lost ten pounds.

So what is the point of this post?

Well, now that I’m ten pounds lighter, I’m actually starting to feel better about myself.  Yes, I still dislike my body.  I’m thinner, but I’m still soft, without any real muscle tone.  Some call it feminine, I call it doughy.  But I don’t cringe every time I look in the mirror.  However, even though I just wore a bathing suit yesterday and barely thought about my body…people are being rude once again.  But am I still being called fat?

No.

I’m being told to eat a freaking sandwich.

I’m being told that I’m not a real woman.

Even Pinterest, as the beautiful and thin Sami pointed out, is degrading me because I don’t shop in the plus-size section.  Pinners are pinning pictures of perfectly healthy girls and labelling them "unnatural."  And let's not forget all the pins with plus-size models that say "Real women have curves."

Never mind the fact that I’m five foot one.  Never mind my undersized bones.  I’m a small human being, so I’m “unnatural.”  I’m not a “real woman.”

Women with “more meat on their bones” (what a ridiculous statement) have long said that they’re persecuted.  Movies like Real Women Have Curves and Hairspray have championed overweight women, telling them that they’re beautiful and they shouldn’t conform to society’s pressures to be a size zero.  And that’s all true.  Some of my most beautiful friends shop in the plus-size section.  Adele, Tyra Banks, and Jessica Simpson have all been persecuted for their weights, but generally people agree that they are absolutely beautiful and talented.  There is nothing wrong with having “more to love.”  (I’m so sorry about these ridiculous sayings.  These weight clichés have got to go.)

But in the process of making bigger women feel comfortable in their bodies, people are belittling the skinny people.

Let me just say that I understand the frustration with Hollywood’s definition of the “perfect body.”  Women like Angelina Jolie, Rachel Zoe, and pre-baby Nicole Richie make me want to vomit—not because they’re disgusting women!  They’re far from disgusting.  But they make me want to vomit because I vomit when I haven’t eaten all day, and these women look like they haven’t eaten all month, and my stomach feels so sorry for their poor stomachs.  I don’t think any woman should ever attempt to look like that, because it’s not healthy when your bones protrude from your body.

But what is wrong with being slim?  Not eating disorder skinny, not chubby, but just slim.

I hate to remind you, but slim is healthy.  Slim means your arteries aren’t clogged up.  Slim means you are at a smaller risk for heart disease and diabetes.  On the other hand, slim means there is food in your belly.  Slim means your muscles, bones, and organs are being nourished.  Slim means that you have more energy.

Slim is…great.

So why is being slim/slender/skinny/small/petite/WHATEVER such a bad thing?

I realize that most people would love to be small.  I realize that movies, magazines, and TV are advocates of “Thin is in.”  I realize that overweight people—or even “thick” people, whatever that means—have to deal with a lot of jackasses who make fun of them.  I realize that “bigger” people are beautiful.  They really are.  But in our efforts to make the bigger people feel better about themselves, we’re chiding the smaller people.  We’re making the small people feel persecuted.

This needs to stop.

Probably my biggest pet peeve out of all of this is that line I keep using—“Real women have curves.”  Lane Bryant, a plus-size store, is always using the words “real women” in their ad campaigns.  In the movie Dreamgirls, Jennifer Hudson (who has lost a lot of weight since the filming of this movie) says to Jamie Foxx that he needs a “real woman” instead of “birds” like Beyonce.  There is even a movie called Real Women Have Curves.

I will repeat my stats to you: I am five foot one.  I weigh 110 lbs.
And I have curves.

Yes, ma’am, I do.

My friends (and sister and mother) have nicknames for my boobs and my hips, because those parts of me are just so…out there.  I’ve been told on multiple occasions I have an hourglass figure.  It’s taken me a while to get to this state of mind, but I absolutely love my boobs and hips.  I like the fact that I don’t have to buy push-up bras.  I like the fact that these trendy high-waisted skirts look amazing flaring out from my hips.

But, despite all of the teasing I get for my boobs and hips, people still insist I don’t have curves, because I’m a size six.

Girl, look at that body--these are curves!

Oh, and since I don’t have curves, I’m not a real woman.

So, what am I?  A girl?  A fake woman?  A fictional woman?  If I’m not real, do I even exist?
Exactly.  You see the ridiculousness of this thinking.  A real woman is someone who was born with a vagina.  It has nothing to do with weight, body type, or sizes.

I have curves, anyway.  But even if I didn’t, I would still be a real woman.

So, I guess this entire rant is just to say to the persecutors: stop using skinny people as a way to make yourself feel better.  Skinny people have feelings, too.  I’ve been in your shoes before.  I know how it feels to hate skinny people because they call you fat.  I was never more than a few pounds over my body’s ideal weight, but people were still cruel.  I used to feel nothing but resentment toward people with amazing bodies.  But now I’m realizing that I am skinny—I am just curvy, in my own way.

And for God’s sake, don’t call skinny people “unhealthy,” “sick,” “anorexic,” or even insinuate that we’re not “real.”  There are people with eating disorders, of course, but the majority of thin people have perfectly healthy relationships with food.  We’re very healthy.  We’re not sick.  We love to eat.  I once had an extremely unhealthy relationship with food—I either used it as a crutch or completely ignored it when times got hard.  Now, not so much.  I love to eat--healthily.  And I think I look decent in a bikini.

Finally, my last point: as I said, I do realize that there are many celebrities who are too skinny. I can even think of personal friends who I just want to take to an all-you-can-eat buffet and force-feed them so they'll digest some calories this month. But what good does it do to pin pictures of these women with the words "unnatural," "sick," "disgusting," and "ohmygod look at those ribs she looks like an alien and she needs to eat a sandwich and gross"?  IT DOES NO GOOD. You do realize that the reason these girls are starving themselves is because they are disgusted by themselves, right? So why the hell are we exploiting them and egging on their beliefs that they are "disgusting"?

I just don’t like to be mocked for my weight any more than you do.  And other skinny people don’t like it, either.

Don't make fun of someone for their weight. Don't give them suggestions on how to eat or exercise. And don't use adjectives to describe them, unless they're positive adjectives like "beautiful." It doesn't matter if they're too skinny, healthily slim, slightly pudgy, overweight, or obese.

As Dr. Seuss said, "A person is a person, no matter how small!"

Sarah's Guide to Fabulous Modesty

I wasn't planning for my first real blog post after 13 months to be on fashion. I was actually planning to explore my defense mechanism of apathy and find the correlation/lack of correlation between that and my goals. But, alas, that requires a lot more thought than this. And, while walking across my campus, I was suddenly really disgusted.

I realize that if you are on a college campus, you are probably an adult. I realize that it's a lot of fun to leave your parents' house and be who you want to be. I've indulged in "the real me" quite a few times. I, however, do not understand why you would want to wear an outfit worthy of a hip-hop music video to class.
Let me get this straight: I am not a prude. I adore fashion. Lately, I have spent way too much money in Express, which is not exactly a prudish store. But I do respect myself, and I fully believe that "modest is hottest." I think that I am living proof that you can be modest and stylish all at once. Not tooting my own horn, just stating a fact.

So, I decided to comprise a list of basic fashion rules, organized by category:

Dresses:
When buying a dress, you should know about a few tricks to try in the dressing room.
1.) While wearing the dress, touch your toes. Do you have to hold your dress up to keep your boobs from falling out? Can you touch your toes without showing your butt to the world? Dresses should never show your most feminine body parts.
2.) As you pull the dress over your head, keep your eyes open. Can you see through the fabric? If yes, consider a slip, a tank top, or just put the dress back on the rack.
3.) Look for an air conditioning vent in the dressing room. Yes, seriously. Stand in front of it. Would a gust of wind blow your dress up and show your panties to the world? If you can't find an air conditioning vent, then twirl around. If you're still keeping Victoria's Secret a secret, then you probably should buy the dress!

Shirts:
Many of the same rules apply to shirts.
1.) Touch your toes. Do you have to hold the shirt up to keep your boobs from falling out?
2.) As you pull the shirt over your head, keep your eyes open. Can you see through the fabric?
3.) Raise your arms as high as you can. How high does your shirt ride up? Can you see your belly button? Even worse, can you see your muffin top? If so, that is probably not a classy shirt.
4.) When your arms are resting at your side, can you still see your midriff? Yes? Put it back on the rack, Britney.
5.) Graphic tees: If your father was going to buy you a shirt with a saying on the front, would he pick this one? If not, then don't buy it. No daddy wants to see his little girl in a shirt that says "I recycle boys" or "Bootylicious." (Seriously, who even says Bootylicious anymore? Alas, I saw that t-shirt today.)
Wearing the shirt...
6.) Can you see your bra through your shirt? If yes, find a tank top.
7.) Are you wearing a brightly-colored bra underneath a light-colored shirt that would otherwise be okay? If yes, find another bra.
8.) Are your bra straps showing? (I'm conflicted on this one. Sometimes, with off-the-shoulder shirts, bra straps look like tank top straps. But if you are very obviously showing your bra, you should consider a strapless bra. Don't get the bras with clear straps--everyone notices them.)

Jeans/Slacks:
1.) My number one rule: don't wear skinny jeans if you don't have skinny genes. Skinny jeans on women who have a little extra curve in their hips, thighs, and calves only reveal what you don't want to be revealed, and that is the opposite of modesty. Skin-tight jeans show every dimple in your skin. And those colored skinnies that are so inexplicably popular? They only make you look like a giant dumpling that was dipped in food coloring. I'm not trying to be rude. This is the talk I give myself every time I go shopping. Learn your body. Learn what kinds of jeans fit you and make you look/feel great. I loved skinny jeans all throughout high school, but after gaining nearly ten pounds my first semester of college, I learned to embrace straight-leg jeans and boot-cut jeans (but only with boots and heels). I'm starting to love my booty again. This isn't just about being stylish and aware of how to dress for your body type. This is also about modesty. Some girls can look modest in tight jeans, but some (myself included) just can't.
2.) Can you see your buttcrack when you stand up straight? Remember that crack kills.
3.) Can you see your buttcrack when you bend over? Crack kills!
4.) Are there holes in your pants that show your underwear or your pockets? Please understand that I love ripped/distressed jeans...but if you can see your pockets, you're probably showing too much thigh. And Victoria's Secret should be secretive!
5.) Does your thong/panties show over your waistband? Do I even have to explain why this is trashy?

Skirts/Shorts
1.) Touch your toes. You should understand why by now. If you're wearing shorts, can you see the bottoms of your butt cheeks? Yeah? Trust me when I say that no respectable boy wants to see their lady wear that out in the streets.
2.) Are they so short that you can see your pockets? Yeah? Put them back.
3.) For skirts, use the air conditioning trick again.

Miscellaneous
1.) Leggings are not pants. The '80s called; they want their fashion disaster back.
2.) If your tights/leggings/panty hose have rips, runs, and shreds...don't wear them. Basically, if one of Ke$ha's most popular hits sings about something you're wearing, you should probably just rethink your entire wardrobe.
3.) A short skirt and thigh-high boots are for bad pornos, not for you.
4.) Do your fishnets say "Elle Woods", or "Vivian the Pretty Woman Prostitute"? You'll know the difference.
5.) An inch-thick layer of foundation and a pound of eye makeup may not be "immodest," but it is still "trashy." If your face is a different color than your neck or shoulders, you're wearing way too much!
6.) Corset tops? No. Just no.
7.) Bras--listen, girls, I hate bras more than anyone. As soon as I enter my dorm, the bra comes off and is flung across the room. But in public, they should be required. If you're wearing a sweatshirt over a t-shirt and don't plan on taking the sweatshirt off, okay, go for comfort. But if you're wearing a dress, cute top, sweater, or t-shirt, you need something to reign the girls in. Girls who are smaller on top might can wear a tank top. But if you wear a tank top and you're still jiggling while you walk, just wear the bra. If bras did not serve an honorable purpose, they would not have been invented.

Honestly, though, my biggest fashion tip can't exactly be given to everyone. But if you know a guy who respects you, he will always be honest with you. My dad and my little brother both tell me when they think an outfit isn't working. Dad just tells me "Go put on a sweater" and Sam just tells me "Wow, you look like a whore." Harsh, but effective.

If you're not convinced, here are some lovely pictures of modern style icons whose featured outfits are following my rules:

Emma Watson
(by the way, I've never met a straight male who didn't adore her)

Awesome street wear for chillier weather. And an awesome quote. It's okay to let guys wonder what's underneath. Just don't show them right off the bat.

Such a cute and fun dress that shows some leg but hides your goodies. And another awesome quote.

Sexy cleavage, but a modest dress. Yes, ladies, it's possible.

Taylor Swift

(hate her music, love her style)

A lady in the streets...

...and at the best parties in the country.

Jennifer Hudson
(for those of us with boobs and hips)

 Here's a woman who knows how to show off her boobs and her hips without actually showing her boobs and her hips.

Hello, cutie pie! It's nice to see (some of) you!

But, of course, modesty is not only about clothes and makeup. It's about how you carry yourself and how you behave.  If you're a lady (and you probably are, if you've made it this far into this post), you'll probably understand these immortal words. Take them to heart.

Carrie in the closet...

Charlotte in the streets...

Miranda in the classroom...

And Samantha in the sheets.

Style like Carrie. Have Charlotte's class. Use your brain like Miranda. And be sexy like Samantha...behind closed doors.

Thanks for reading, sweetie pies! Keep it classy!

Resurgam

Whoa, am I back? Whoa, do I still have readers? After thirteen long months of simply being too busy to blog, I finally wrote something that I felt couldn't be posted anywhere but here. I don't know if anyone will read this, or if anyone will even find this relevant, but I may just start posting here again. We'll see.

Here's what you need to know since I last posted:
I'm now in college, majoring in English, with a minor in Creative Writing.

I'm 550 pages deep into writing my first novel.

I literally don't have time to sleep anymore, but I still want to write on this thing.

So...who's with me?

(New post to follow shortly.)