You're so skinny!
You're just all legs aren't you!
Have you lost weight, you look so thin!
So, all of these comments probably sound great, and most likely you may believe that girls love to hear compliments such as these, but not me. Actually, I think there are many people like me who hate hearing compliments like this. I want to be brutally honest with you for a moment about what actually happens when I hear a compliment like this. First, my heart starts racing, then my chest feels like it is tightening so much that I find it hard to breath, followed by crippling anxiety that someone is looking closely at my body and LYING to me because it is entirely evident of the two pounds I gained last week because I decided to "cheat" and eat some french fries at dinner. Are you actually being genuine and trying to give me a compliment? Most likely, but I cannot physically or mentally stop myself from feeling this reaction.
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I grew up hearing people tell me how skinny I was all the time. That is what happens when you are five foot seven and weigh 115 pounds all the way through your senior year. I was a very active teenager and spent a lot of time running and exercising for various sports. I know that many people would perceive my body as a great one, but I didn't realize the repercussions this would have as I reached adulthood.
I left high school and went on to prepare for and play in a collegiate sport. If you aren't familiar will collegiate athletics, it is a lot more physically taxing than high school sports. We spent hours working out and lifting weights as a team and individually. Although I didn't play all four years of college, I did continue to work out on my own. But sadly, the effects of lifting weights like I had never done before, did not help my very slender and boney teenage frame. In the first year of college I gained twenty pounds, each pound more horrifying than the last. My legs and arms were so muscular that although my waist had not changed, I could no longer fit into my high school wardrobe without looking like I was about to go all Hulk and tear through them. Now yes this is a bit of an exaggeration, but that is how I felt in my mind. But even though I knew that it was all muscle I was gaining, the change in size of my clothes I correlated to "getting fat" or the even worse "freshman fifteen."
So, where did all of this anxiety start? For years I had heard how skinny I was and I somehow began to associate that with my size two jeans and my extra small shirts. Now, as a 22 year old in a medium shirt and a size five jeans, I was feeling like the most overweight person on the planet. I felt disgusting and fat and ashamed to wear clothes that were even remotely tight to my body. I just wanted to hide inside baggy shirts and loose athletic pants. And let's not even talk about shorts because sometimes it is physically painful to even try to wear shorts because I feel like everyone is staring at my gigantic legs. No matter how healthy I eat and how much exercise I get a day, I still struggle with not being the same size as I was when I was a teenager, even though I know I am not supposed to be that size forever.
Now I didn't share this story with you so that you can compliment me or make me feel better about myself, I shared my fears and anxieties with you because I know I am not alone. I continually deal with my own insecurities about my body by talking about it with my friends who have the same problems as me. Girls, in general, are fairly insecure about their bodies and it is nothing to be ashamed of. But the real problem here is the associations we make early on in life that causes us to have these problems as we get older...like being told how skinny we are when we are still just kids. You may think you are being kind by telling that girl how beautiful she is and how skinny she looks and you may think you're complimenting her when you tell her how thin that dress makes her look, but in all reality, we are only fueling the insecurities that girls are being faced with about their body image today. Girls shouldn't feel like their size determines their beauty and they shouldn't have to monitor everything they eat and how much they exercise to feel beautiful. It is all about learning that their is so much more to beauty than a jean size. Even though we can't change our body image insecurities overnight, we can try to prevent these insecurities in the young girls who are waiting to hear what you think of them. Instead of focusing so much on girl's bodies, we need to begin to encourage and compliment girls on other characteristics besides their body size! Tell her how beautiful her eyes are, tell her how radiant her skin looks, tell her how happy and healthy she seems! But please, don't tell her how thin she is
and
please don't call me skinny.
