This article is in response to "Sorry I'm a Size 00" by Jessica Ulett. It contains discussion of eating disorders. Proceed with discretion.
In middle school, one question I was accustomed to was, “Are you anorexic?” I was skin and bones, but no, I didn’t have an eating disorder, thank you very much.
“You’re so skinny!” people exclaimed all the time.
“Why don’t you eat something?” some others joked at me. “Get big and strong like me.”
But I didn’t want to gain any weight. I liked being told how skinny I was. I liked being thin enough where people compared me to models who were literally killing themselves to be as small as I was. It was the only compliment on my appearance I ever got. I liked being skinny.
What people didn’t know was that in middle school I had an anxiety disorder that prevented me from eating for months. I was grossly underweight, so thin you could just see my ribs. I ate crackers and bread and Cheerios and carrots and strawberries and sometimes I threw those up because of anxiety attacks.
People saw the affects it had on me. In retrospect, their reactions were concerning. Only my grandparents seemed worried that maybe I really did have an eating disorder. Everyone else asked me if I was anorexic the same way they would ask if I got a haircut.
I’m in college now. I’m 5’8 and I’m 135 pounds. That’s completely normal weight. And yet I’ve had people stop commenting on how skinny I am, and it’s hard adverse effects. Sometimes I go whole days without eating because I feel desperate to be as skinny as I was when I literally almost completely stopped eating for months.
“Skinny-shaming” is not a real concept. We live in a culture where you are praised for being naturally that small, and you are praised for it so much that millions of people have developed anorexia and bulimia to be just as praised as you are. And it’s deadly -- eating disorders claim more lives a year than any other mental illness.
I understand the comments you receive. I heard them too. But when you go from being complimented for being so skinny you can see your ribs to being called terrible things for not having a completely flat stomach, it causes an enormous amount of distress, especially when being skinny was the only thing that people ever called you beautiful for.
I understand you had the best intentions when writing your article, but as someone who has multiple friends who have almost died because of eating disorders, I couldn’t help but be somewhat bothered by it. For every jab you get for being skinny, there’s someone else dying because that’s all they desperately want. In fact, someone dies from an eating disorder every 62 minutes.
No one is asking you to apologize for being a Size 00, and to act as if you’re persecuted for being such is a slap in the face to people who are driven to starve themselves until they can achieve it. I’m sorry for any remarks made towards you that made you uncomfortable. But in the larger picture, your size continues to be considered ideal, while everyone else is shamed for being too fat and undesirable as a result. Campaigns like the Dove Real Beauty campaign exist to include other body shapes and sizes that aren’t yours, because as of now, the only body ever treated as beautiful is your body.
Instead of accusing others for having a vendetta against skinny people, speak out against body shaming in general. Speak out against unrealistic standards set for women. Speak out against damaging expectations that drive millions of women every year into developing anorexia, bulimia, and unspecified eating disorders. Skinny bodies have been in the spotlight for long enough. It’s time to start supporting the bodies of all women -- skinny, fat, tall, short, white, black, brown, cisgender, transgender, able-bodied, disabled, and everything in between.
