Skinny: (of a person or part of their body) very thin.
This single word has the ability to ruin a life, change peoples behavior, and so much more. Society is obsessed with this term, this simple 6 letter word. We're obsessed with the idea, the look, the thought of it. Really, we should be obsessed with a different word, healthy.
I've always struggled with body image, being a bigger girl I was subject to plenty of hateful words. In 8th grade I was told by a fellow classmate to not wear a dress to the end of year dance because my legs were "So fat I'd upset the other kids." I hid myself behind jeans, large shirts, and oversized jackets all year round. I was embarrassed, ashamed of something I couldn't help.
I would cry myself to sleep at night wondering why I couldn't eat what all of my other friends could. In high school I finally grew into my body, I wasn't exactly skinny, but I was able to learn how to dress to my body type. I was happy and healthy for a good few years, until my senior year hit.
The second half of my senior year I gained some weight and decided I wasn't happy with my body, I made a change and was able to drop 30 pounds by eating healthy and working out every once in a while. I was confident, happy, and proud of what I looked like, for the first time in my life I finally wasn't ashamed to wear a dress or a tight tee-shirt.
Soon, college came around and with college came the freshman 15, but for me it was more like the freshman 70. Thanks to a side effect of some medicine I was taking I couldn't control my eating, I would eat three cupcakes and two bowls of ice cream for lunch, a box of nerds as a full days meal, but I still didn't understand why I was still gaining more and more weight.
My real obsession didn't begin until I had dropped a few pounds, thinking that I had finally done something right I became to scared to eat. I was afraid that if I consumed any food I'd ruin my chances of being skinny, that I'd gain all the weight back that I had lost. I was obsessed with this idea of what I thought skinny was, so obsessed that I starved myself, cried myself to sleep, and shattered my mental health.
I would go days without eating until I was so hungry I'd go on a binge eating spree, plates of pasta, burgers, fries, anything I could get. Then, I'd gain all the weight back and start the cycle over again. I was ruining my body, gaining and loosing weight so quickly was triggering my auto-immune disease. I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded or sweaty. I gave myself asthma.
When school let out for the summer I was 5 feet tall and 200 pounds, I was wearing a size 16, when I started out the school year as an 8. I hated myself, my body, and most importantly I hated food.
Being home meant no more cafe food, it meant no more pasta, fries, or burgers. One day my mom said to me "Riley, have you weighed yourself lately, you look thinner?" So, reluctantly I went and weighed myself and I had lost 6 pounds, the thoughts started to come back, "eat and you'll get fat again" "ruin this and you'll be fat forever"
I had to learn how to turn those voices off, I started eating better and the weight started leaving, so far this summer I've lost 20 pounds and I'm back down to a size 10. I'm proud of myself and my journey, but I'm also scared, scared as soon as I go back to school I'll ruin all my hard work, scared I'll suddenly feel the need to be skinny again.
Now though I realize, I shouldn't want to be skinny, I should want to be healthy. Even though I'm 180 pounds I look healthier now than I did when I was 150 pounds.
We shouldn't be so obsessed with perfect skinny bodies, we should be obsessed with happy healthy bodies. Also, just because someone isn't the definition of "skinny" doesn't mean that they're unhealthy. I ruined my health trying to achieve skinny, I know now that I will never be able to achieve that, I will always be a little bit chubbier and that is okay. All I need is to be healthy.
So society, let's get obsessed with healthy. So people can stop starving themselves for a (sometimes) unachievable goal.
