I grew up looking up to the women in magazines and television, the women with the perfectly white teeth, the delicate wrists and the tiny waist. I was a skinny girl growing up. I was asked constantly if I was anorexic, but when I ate more than usual, people commented on it. Called me out. Joked about it. I grew up having to create holes in my belt because the tightest it could go still wasn’t tight enough. I grew up wearing clothes that had fit when I was a young girl. But I looked at myself and I was unhappy - I didn’t look like the girls on television.

When I had my first real boyfriend, he told me that I looked sickly in one of my pictures. I cried in my room, tears soaking through the blanket pressed to my cheek. I didn’t look like the girls everywhere looked. I wanted to be that girl. There were several people I wished I could look like - but my body type said no. My facial structure said no. My hands told me I couldn’t change. My nose scoffed when I tried to cover it. My ribs pointed their fingers at me, laughed when I took off my shirt. And they weren’t the only ones; there were people who would tease me for my small wrists, my twig legs.

I grew up wearing a shirt and shorts to the pool, to the beach. I would rather cover myself with clothes than show my ribs and bony knees. I grew up changing in the bathroom after gym because I didn’t want anyone to see. Small shirts hung off my frame, but I liked large shirts because I could hide myself away within the cloth. I liked slipping under the radar - I wanted to go unnoticed.

I was ashamed of how I looked. While others girls were growing breasts, while other girls had hips that were filling out, I had baggy shirts that weren’t supposed to be baggy.

I grew up wanting to be like the girls I saw everywhere else. I grew up thinking I wasn’t sexy, because the girls on the magazines labeled ‘sexy’ didn’t look like me. I didn’t think anyone would find me attractive.

Media representations are toxic, for either side of the spectrum. You were supposed to be thin - but not skinny. Not like me.

I wish I could go back in time and change the way I thought. Too many times I looked at myself in the mirror, too many times I cupped my ribs and felt the valley that existed between my breasts, and I cried. I wish I could go back in time and change the way I thought of myself. I wish I could have told myself that I didn’t have to look like anybody else.

Now that I’ve realized that, I’ve gained some weight. I’m healthy now - but I’m still underweight for my height. I still have small wrists. I still have ribs that poke out. But I am able to look at myself and feel like this is how I’m supposed to look, that it’s okay to look the way I do. I don’t look like supermodels. I don’t look like plus size models. Instead, I’m somewhere in between. I’m not alone but with thousands of other women that don’t see their body type represented accurately in television, magazines, comic books, clothing stores. My voice has been repeated millions of times: “I just wished I looked different.” I’m neither here nor there, neither this or that. Instead, my body type is my own.

And I’ve since realized that that’s okay.