Society has raised the standards of beauty to a 6' , 115-pound woman without a blemish on her face or an ounce of fat on her. This nearly impossible standard has set the tone for body shaming, pushing hate onto the majority of people that don't fit into this category of beauty. The world is so focused on ending fat shaming, and while that is a noble cause, what about the girls that don't fit the impossible pop-cultural standard but aren't viewed as "big enough" to be body shamed? What happens to their voice, and who is fighting for them when someone tells them that they're just average, or even that they're small enough that they could blow away with the wind?
Some girls will take one look at me and tell me I have no room to talk about body shaming. I'm a 5'6 girl with size 2 jeans and all they see is a skinny girl with no reason to have insecurities about her body. Little do they know that I hated myself because of the way I look and that my figure is my biggest insecurity. People sit and judge me because I'm "not allowed" to be insecure about my body because I'm not "thick" or "heavy", and the worst part about this is that most of my insecurity about my body doesn't stem from men, but from my fellow women! I may be a slim, long-legged young woman but I still have every right to be just as insecure and uncomfortable with my body as anyone else.
In my 7th-grade health class we were forced to watch videos about different sorts of eating disorders. At the time, I was lucky if I weighed 100 pounds, and while sitting through those videos was horrific, the real horror came after when a group of girls in my class came up to me and asked me if I was anorexic and if that's why I was so skinny. They laughed and tried to guess at what eating disorder I had. "Anorexia? Bulimia? Come on, what is it?!"
I went home and shut myself in my room and hoped that their voices would go away. I was embarrassed and utterly insulted. I had no eating disorder, I never have! I ate just as much as my dad, a full grown man, did at dinner, but my metabolism was fast - and it still is. That's not something that I can control, so why on Earth am I being made to feel like less of a human because of it?
Those girls in my class made me feel like nothing but a piece of meat, just the same as men do when they cat-call. I get the typical "Stupid skinny bitch", "Most girls wish they could look like you", even "You have it easy". Men have even come up to me telling me that I'm "too skinny" and that I "should eat more"!
What I want to know is, how could I have it easy when I don't always feel comfortable in my own skin? Why should I care if other girls wish they could look like me when I look down at my size 2 pants and wish that they were a size 4 or a size 6? And plainly, telling a girl that she is too skinny and that she needs to eat more is exactly the same as telling a girl that she's too big and needs to eat less. It's not flattering, it's offensive and demeaning on so many levels, and frankly, I am so sick of it. I'm tired of being made to feel like less of a human. And I absolutely hate that other women have had their share of making me feel like a shell of myself because I'm not "heavy" or "thick" enough to feel like I've been body shamed when they're sitting there judging me for having a metabolism that makes it nearly impossible for me to gain weight no matter how hard I try.
Other girls feel like they're degraded by men and women because they're too big, while I'm degraded by men and women for being too small. In a world that is fighting to stop weight shaming, it seems like all we're working towards is ending the shaming of girls who are seen to be "too big" by societal standards instead of promoting equal treatment of all women no matter their body types. While I will sit here and applaud Meghan Trainor for praising girls that are "all about that bass" and "bringing booty back," I can't help but feel like her popular song was also degrading women like me that are consistently referred to as the "skinny bitches" and instead of being "all about that bass," are nothing but "treble". And while support is given to curvy girls when they're struggling with their figures, the same courtesy doesn't seem to be offered when a thin girl is struggling with her own self-image.
Women are shamed day in and day out for the way our bodies do or don't look. We're either too tall or too short, too skinny or too big, not enough boobs or butt, too much boobs or butt. No matter what kind of body type a girl has, she is still told she's not fitting with the societal standards of beauty enough, and worse than that, we're raised to think that our size actually matters. But screw that! Honestly, none of us are beautiful if all we do is tear each other down! As cliche as it sounds, we're all beautiful no matter what we look like, and instead of dragging other people through the mud because of their appearances, we should be saying to hell with what we look like! The most important part of humans is what's on the inside - the intelligence, the kindness, the compassion, and all the other things that truly make us beautiful.
And for everyone out there that's shamed me for not having that "boom boom that all the boys chase" or thinking that I'm one of those "stick figure, silicone Barbie dolls", you can be damn sure that on the day of my commencement, the decoration on my graduation cap will read: "Small Boobs, Big Dreams". Whether I'm thin, thick, short, tall, big-breasted, or flat-chested, I will always stand against body shaming and I will own my look and be proud of it, because it's not the outside that matters, but the qualities that each individual possesses.
