As A Naturally Skinny Person I Beg You To Be Anti Body Standard

anti body standard

 

Skinny isn’t necessarily unhealthy, and slogans like “Anti Size Zero” can mislead. Don’t be anti size-anything. Be anti body standard. Women shouldn’t be expected to be a size 2 OR a size 12. We should just be.

It seems that there are two extreme beliefs about how a woman’s figure should look. In pop culture all you see is overly photoshopped size 2 girls flaunting what they’ve got. And on the internet you have girls bashing REAL (as opposed to overly photoshopped) normal girls who really are size 2.

Every time you walk through a mall, open a magazine, or turn on your television you have pictures of super thin, busty women everywhere. Obviously these standards for the female body are seriously skewed, however, almost every time I scroll through my tumblr I see at least one post consisting of a picture of a girl who looks to be a healthy weight, or even a tad chubby (NOT a bad thing), and one who looks slightly underweight.

There’s always a caption for the underweight girl that says something along the lines of “this isn’t beautiful”, and then another caption for the picture of the bigger girl that says something like “THIS is”.

So let me get this straight, I’m not beautiful because I have a high metabolism that refuses to let me gain weight, and I’m active? I’m all for body confidence, but it hurts to see slogans like “Anti-size zero“. That makes it sound like they not only hate the severely messed up pop culture standards for women, but also real girls, like me, who are naturally healthy size 0’s. I’m not Anti-size anything. I’m Anti-body standard.

I think it’s wrong that there are any standards for what a woman should look like. That means I believe women shouldn’t be expected to be a size 2 OR a size 10. We should just be. Women come in all shapes and sizes and as long as you’re a healthy weight for your height, there shouldn’t be a problem. I understand that there are women who have a lot of trouble losing extra weight, just as I know there are women, like me, who have the same struggle to gain weight. People shouldn’t judge if someone has “a little extra weight” or looks “too skinny” because sometimes that woman is trying to do something about it but it’s hard.

I get my physique from my maternal Grandmother. We’re both stick thin with almost no curves to speak of. I don’t own a pair of jeans bigger than a size 2. I am five feet tall and weigh ninety one pounds. My whole life has been a struggle with my weight. When I was little my Mother would send me to her best friend’s house before a doctor’s appointment for the sole purpose of shoving food down my throat so I would weigh something.

No matter what I eat or how much or how frequently, I’ve never been able to gain much weight. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever even hit a hundred pounds. Is that my fault? No. So why are those of us who are naturally a size 0 or 2 being targeted by these girls who feel so slighted by the media? Take the battle to those who try to force being a size 2 on you, not those of us who are naturally that size.

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