I’ve always been small in terms of weight. People are always in awe of how they can wrap their hand around my entire forearm, and are always urging me to eat more. When I was younger my weight never phased me; I ate when I was hungry and had junk food in moderation with fruits and veggies.
In the 5th grade, I encountered skinny shaming for the first time, and my outlook was changed forever. I was on the playground and one of my friends came up to tell me that the shirt I was wearing made me look anorexic because I was so skinny. Even though I didn’t totally understand the magnitude of what she had said, I knew it wasn’t nice and began to cry. Being friends with many people who have struggled with eating disorders, I think calling someone anorexic just because they are skinny is incredibly inappropriate. Being skinny and eating disorders aren’t perpetually connected with one another, and it is ignorant to assume that they are.
Recently, the popular children’s toy company Barbie created a new line of dolls to be more realistic to the average American woman’s body type. While the line includes a variety of skin, eye and hair color along with a variety of body types, it is the “plus-sized” dolls that are getting the most attention. While I agree that it is about time that children’s toys better represent the children playing with them, I feel that all the dolls should be celebrated rather than one body type.
Skinny shaming also occurs in music and pop culture, with Meghan Trainor being reveled for her song “All About That Bass," written to celebrate curvier women. While her message was awesome, it was one particular line that rubs me and many other listeners the wrong way. "She says, “Boys like a little more booty to hold at night”… You know I won’t be no stick figure, silicone Barbie doll…” Not only is Trainor insinuating that men do not find skinny women as attractive, but also that to be skinny is directly associated with being a Barbie which suggests a level of fake-ness that I personally wouldn’t like to be compared to. She also refers to smaller girls as skinny bitches, in order to strengthen her point that curvy is beautiful.
I think that our society needs to continue toward ad campaigns portraying REAL plus sized models, and images that aren’t edited because all girls should feel beautiful the way that they are. However, just because our society is beginning to see the beauty in “thick” and “curvy” girls does not mean that skinny girls should be pushed under the rug. It seems like girls today are struggling to have a skinny waist, a huge butt and the biggest breasts their body can handle. It’s true that expecting everyone to be a size zero is an unrealistic beauty standard, but it’s also unrealistic to expect girls like me to have a bubble butt and a huge rack, because without major surgery, no amount of squats or pushups at the gym will help us to achieve “beauty."
Overall, I think it’s true that curvy is beautiful and I think it is great that we live in a day and age where this is more easily realized, but just because curves are beautiful doesn’t mean that naturally skinny isn’t beautiful either. Instead of creating standards of beauty that are continually unattainable for one person or another, I think it’s time to quit it with the skinny shaming and accept that every body type has it’s own beauty, and we should be supporting each other instead of tearing each other down.
