Thick girls are in! Great, right? WRONG.
As with everything else, we have screwed this up royally while trying to be advocates and knights in shining armor for the underrepresented. Even when it seems like we’re doing something right, we’re still wrong.
That’s because we’re not addressing the real problem at hand, just pretending to.
There has not been a day where I don’t scroll through Instagram and see a perfectly normal looking (for lack of a better word) woman labeled as plus sized by her company.
Even worse than that, these girls are used as the face of every “plus sized” product. Just like the idea of the token black girl in TV shows, this girl is the modeling industry’s token thick girl.
“Thicker than a bowl of oatmeal” girls are the new wave and so many are just riding along not seeing the tsunami up ahead.
The most obvious thing wrong with this is that people have changed the face of thick and with that, its definition. The word has taken on a more positive meaning. Normally, it was a covert way of calling someone fat (other examples of this include big-boned, full-figured, chubby, and curvy). Everybody wants in, and that’s completely fine. Work for the body you want and see the results.
What’s not cool is that while everyone is out getting that coveted “thicc bod,” the ones who’ve always had it are still getting fat-shamed.
In this process of making “thick” OK, the image of it has changed because if we’re being honest with ourselves, we still believe fat is synonymous with ugly.
So we invented a new image.
Thick girls whose thighs jiggle just enough, flat tummies or just a little "pudge," bubble butts, and, more importantly, thick girls who are constantly working to lose that weight but now with the more noble purpose of being active for themselves, not for the image.
Before I go any further, I want it to be clear that there is nothing wrong with people wanting to be healthier or wanting to improve their lifestyles.
What is wrong is forcing people into these lifestyles because you've made them believe that they are not beautiful.
America's favorite pastime lately is pretending to care about fat people. Fat people are constantly attacked on social media by people who hide behind the excuse, "It's for your health." Shaming people is not helping.
I'll say it again: shaming is not helping.
Just as they led us to believe that being a size zero was the only way to go, they are now saying that being "thick" is the only way to be desirable. We must stop letting others define our beauty.
We are not all the same, so we should not all be held to one standard of beauty, especially not one formulated by men. Each and every woman is different and her uniqueness should be valued, not compared to that of other women.
