The Other Side of Skinny

What is the ideal body? All my life society has portrayed the perfect body as one that is free of fat in the midsection and in laymen’s terms a very skinny individual. Individuals strive to obtain this type of body and often go to extreme proportions to gain it. There are countless stories of girls that have an altered body image and unfortunately develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. All forms of the media portrayed this image of the ideal “Barbie body” while I was growing up. Perhaps the worst form of media that stresses this “Barbie body” is the modeling industry where girls who are about a size 4-6 are told they are fat and need to lose weight to become a size 0.

All my life I have had this “ideal” body and others are often very envious of it because society tells them that everyone should have my body size. I would like to present what I call “The Other Side of Skinny” and share my story of how the ideal body that lots of girls are striving for is not all what it is cracked up to be. As I mentioned before I have been skinny all of my life and I have never had to work for it. Although in high school I ran cross country and track I did not need to do this as a necessity to keep my skinny body. Additionally I can eat whatever I want whenever I want and I never gain any weight. Whenever people hear about this the usual reaction is, “Wow I hate you! Why are you complaining about that?” They then joke that they will trade some of their body fat they are trying to lose and will give it to me and I gladly say I will accept it. Most times individuals think I am joking however I am completely honest. I would like to gain weight.

Although I may be perceived as a girl with a perfect body it really is a struggle for me to buy clothes that actually fit. Each and every time that I go shopping I pray that I will be able to find pants that actually fit and don’t have a gaping hole at the rear. When I go shopping most times all of the pants I do try on don’t fit quite right, or they fit for say two times I wear them and after that I have to constantly pull them up if I go anywhere. I know what you might be thinking, “Why don’t you just get a belt then?” Well I don’t really care for belts and sometimes even they don’t help as the weight of the belt continues to pull down the pants.

I also my whole life I have constantly struggled with gaining weight. The most recent example took place the summer after 10^th grade which was back in 2006. Due the summer I came down with strep throat, (pesky Streptococcus pyogenes) and I was so sick that I could not eat because my throat hurt so bad. It hurt to the point that I didn’t even drink water so I basically didn’t eat for a week until the medicine took effect. I was relieved when the strep was gone however I lost 10 pounds because I had not eaten. I was very upset that at 15 years old I was only 100 pound and from the summer of 2006 until recently I have been trying to gain the weight back and have not had success until the past couple of weeks. It is pretty crazy that it took 7 years to gain 10 pounds! I would really like to be able to buy clothes that actually fit and not be worried about my hip bones constantly sticking out or my pants constantly falling down.

Recently there is a big drive to show individuals that they do not have to be skinny which I love but at the same time I am now getting criticized for being too skinny when in reality this is how my body was created to be. My mom also was skinny all of her life and I have talked to her many times about her struggles with being so skinny throughout her life and how individuals judged her and critiqued her as well. Although I love this new drive to show women they do not need to be a size 0 I am getting backlash for how my body is. In fact during a break in my Anatomy class in the fall of 2011 a fellow student told me that I should walk up to the parking lot and drive to McDonald’s and eat a cheeseburger because I was too skinny. Another time she said something to the extent that I was so skinny that I must eat bird food to stay so skinny. Although I know she was joking this really hurt me because I have actively been trying to gain weight over the past 7 years and it often is a struggle to do so.

I suppose the underlying message behind this blog is not to complain about my woes of how hard it is to be skinny but to show that “this ideal” that society has been telling women is not as glamorous as it seems. I also wanted to stress the idea that you should not let others tell you how your body should be. God made each and every one of us in his own image and you should not strive to be what society tells you to be like, rather be who you want to be. Set your own standards of how you want your body to be and strive towards that goal. Everyone is beautiful in their own individual way; don’t feel trapped by the societal standard of the “Barbie body” which studies have shown are completely unrealistic. Remember beauty is in the eye of the beholder and whether you are “skinny”, “fat”, “short”, or “tall” you are beautiful!