Thursday, 25 August 2011

• You Are Beautiful

  

  So looking at an old friend's page full of self loathing and thinspo potshots at herself, I realized something.

  I'm better....

  How do I figure this? I used to agree with the statements like "Dear body, get thinner so I can have dinner." I used to force myself to get sick, or just refuse to eat and "tailspun" into hypoglycemia. I used to hate myself in general, and my body more so than my destructive mind. I hated skinny girls, and constantly wished that I was tiny. Nothing looked good enough on me. Food was the devil, and binging came around way too much.
  
  I saw pictures and "thinspiration" quotes today and nearly got sick. There was so much hatred from a very beautiful girl towards herself. I no longer got it, I didn't understand anymore. And so I had to wonder, what changed in a few months? From self-starvation and self-induced hypoglycemia to a semi healthy weight and mindset?

  It really is you making peace with yourself. Because seriously, seeing these teenage girls that look like skeletons and striving to look like that when you know full well that your body was not built like that is well, INSANE. But I know why we do it / did it... because of what you think you need to look like to be loved, and accepted as beautiful. I don't want to look like a prepubescent little girl, I don't want people to look at me and hate themselves. No one should ever look in the mirror and wonder why.

  No one should have to hide the scale in the bathroom to save them from themselves. No one should have to feel anything less than amazing. No one should ever have to feel like the "fat chick" in the room when she has been starving for days. And no one should have to stare at pictures of scrawny girls and pray to God to someday look like that. Knowing that I used to do that and that so many women of every age still does this, breaks my heart.

  I work at Fashion Bug, and we carry clothing for all sizes of women. I love this fact. But occasionally, I will get a few customers who hate their bodies because they are "too fat," or "disgusting." I wish I could tell every woman that she is beautiful in her own way. So what if you may be a bit curvier than what society deems acceptable? Not very many people fit in that small category anyways. And besides, someone loves you no matter what you look like.

  I had a woman who people had beaten down about her weight her whole life. She asked me what I thought of a shirt she had tried on, and I told her I loved it and complimented how it hugged her curves. This shirt was so lovely on her, and if she didn't have the curves she did, it would not have worked but it came together nicely. She sighed and called herself fat.

  I could not believe this. So I told her repeatedly how she was a very beautiful woman, and not to down herself. Her reply was, "You're right, plenty of other people will put me down for me."

  What kind of world do we live in that causes a beautiful woman in her mid thirties or early forties to hate herself so much? Maybe I don't understand the cruelty of man, or maybe I am that naive. But I just don't understand why we all have to hate the way our bodies look if we can't squeeze into a size 0 pair of jeans. Now I will admit, I am a size 18 (this was the last time I bought jeans, I am probably smaller now). I am proud of how I look. I may be losing weight, but I don't want to be deathly small. I don't condone obesity, but ladies, let's be proud of our bodies instead of loathing.

  So here's your challenge readers,
  Go look in your mirror. Write down all the things about yourself that you do like. And for the things you don't like, think about them again. Instead this time, forget everyone else. Fuck the people who think you aren't perfect. Without any outside influence, look at yourself and see if that dislike isn't actually your own, but a product of society. Reply to this and let me know if it helped any.

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