When my sister says she’s fat, I get frustrated. I say, “No you’re not! Go look in the mirror, can’t you see how skinny you are?” I don’t get how a 5’7”, hundred twenty-something pound girl could think that. But then I remember I was that girl. Sometimes, I still am that girl.
There are days when I yell at myself for eating that second cookie because the sugar has painted a constellation of bumpy red pimples across my cheeks. When I stare into the mirror at my legs in jean shorts that squeeze my thighs like hair ties around my wrist, and I’m convinced that since I can’t comfortably fit into a size zero I must be too fat. There are still days where I mentally beat the sh*t out of myself because I’m just not small enough to wear that dress, or pretty enough to be listened to, or curvy enough to be sexy.
So how can I tell her to stop saying it aloud when I’m constantly saying it in my head? Maybe with age we learn to hide our insecurities. We figure out that no one wants to hear about them, that “girls with confidence are the sexiest kind." They say to wear our confidence proudly, yet tell us simultaneously not to show too much, or “act like that," or be so outspoken because it comes off as pushy. Perhaps we get stuck in a single contender-boxing match, going back and forth between who we are and who we’re forced to be, eventually ending in self-destruction. Maybe they shoot off fireworks after to celebrate another girl broken.
I don’t believe we are entirely at fault. We go through that shift, learning not to speak of our insecurities in the open. We get told we aren’t good enough, and hold it in. We are water boarded with photoshopped images of the “perfect girl," and hold it in. We see certain women we are taught to be jealous of, and hold it in. Eventually, you will fill up with self-hatred and envy, but it isn’t acceptable to show it. The result is waterfalls of burning tears at 2 a.m. or private counseling sessions with close friends where the contest is to see who hates themselves most.
Unfortunately, pretending we love ourselves doesn’t automatically convince us to. For some reason, self love is the hardest kind to give. I’ve found that I’m more inclined to give it away to others; that it’s easier to accept someone else’s flaws than it is to forgive ourselves for having any. We are convinced that we constantly need to be improved upon; that we aren’t at our best, so the goal is to become more. This causes a shift in the way we view ourselves. It makes us realize that we are never enough and that there are always more goals to make; that we should never be comfortable in our current state.
Maybe instead of being taught to hide our insecurities, we should learn to change the mindset of body image. Possibly the better question to ask my sister is why. Why do you think you’re fat? Instead of trying to convince others that they’re perfect and that they shouldn’t be saying that, we should get to the bottom of why they’re feeling that way. Most of the time, it has nothing to do with the actual physical problem and everything to do with an emotional one or a skewed idea of reality and what they feel is expected from them.
It’s time to stop bottling up insecurities because every time they will burst open like shaken champagne. We need to stop tallying up our self image issues and start talking about them, start solving them.
