The Reasonably Prudent Law Student

Nothing tastes as good as thin feels..– Skinny&Confident.

I found this micro-blog and it makes me very…uncomfortable. Not with my body. I’m basically almost totally fine with my body. I mean, sure, I hate the little freckles on my legs that look like stubble even after I just shaved my legs, and I don’t like how my hands are always dry in winter no matter what I do, and I think my toes are kind of ugly, but in general? I’m totally fine with my body. I can see myself nude in the bathroom mirror after a shower and not have a total meltdown, so I interpret that as being fine with my body.

I’ve always liked that picture of her. She would totally be called fat by today’s standards, but no one would ever dare say that Marilyn Monroe isn’t beautiful.

But the site I linked to up there just makes me feel really awful for women that are already insecure about their bodies. It’s weird because there are certain things on the site that I totally agree with, like the honey and cinnamon post. I drink honey water all the time, and I often put a mixture of honey and cinnamon paste in my tea. I do it for the health benefits (honey is great for so many ailments!) and not so much for the weight loss.

And frankly, I’ve never seen any of the supposed weight loss powers of the honey-cinnamon mixture. I drink it often enough and haven’t managed to shed my flab. Whatever. Enough about my weight. I agree with certain posts on there. There aren’t very many I agree with, but still. Just to be nice.

And there are so many posts on there that I despise. The site is chock full of images of very, very skinny girls, and that’s what really makes me uncomfortable.

Clicking on the pictures will take you to the post. The URLs given to the posts are telling, too. Some of these pictures are a little racy for this blog, but I’m trying to make a point here. I’ll get to that point, I promise.

I realize I’m dangerously close to falling in the trap of scrutinizing skinny bodies the way people do fatter ones. I’m sure I’ll be flamed for that.

Naturally skinny girls, more power to you. I bet some of the girls in these pictures are just naturally skinny and have a hard time packing on the pounds no matter what. Some. A small, small number.

My problem with these pictures in this context is simply this: the young women and girls looking at these pictures. THAT is what I’m worried about, that is what I’m uncomfortable about, and that is what I’m kind of angry about. Not like rabid-angry; suffice it to say that sites like this just exemplify a pet peeve of mine.

All women have different body types. Some are tall, some are short, some are of average height. Some are pear-shaped, some are athletically built, some are top-heavy, some are just straight throughout without defined curves, and so on. Every body basically has a shape of its own that it’s just naturally inclined to.

Most nutritionists and dieticians, when working with a client, will soon be able to figure out what weight that unique body wants to be. Yes, the weight that the body wants to be. Not the person inside the body, but the body. This is the weight we normally hover around if we take care of ourselves, the weight we subconsciously feel very comfortable at. It’s often hard for us to drop below this weight. The problem is, most of us want to be about five pounds lighter than this weight. ;)

For example, I think my natural body weight is about 102. I usually hover around 102. I rarely get to 103, and I rarely drop below 101 no matter how healthy I eat or how often I exercise. The problem is, I like the way I feel when I’m at 100. ;) I think I just like nice, round numbers. I haven’t been at 100 in years, probably since 8th or 9th grade. I hit 101 in my sophomore year of high school and have basically hovered at 101-102 since then. So I don’t really sweat about it. It doesn’t bother me that I’m not at 100. I think I’d like to be, but I’m not, so whatever.

And I think it’s safe to say that the girls and young women looking at these pictures and ‘liking’ these posts and reblogging them are not anywhere near as thin as the subjects of the pictures. And more than that, if they were to defy their own body type and their bodily needs and somehow reach that weight and become that shape, more likely than not, they would be desperately unhealthy. Not all bodies are meant to look like Giselle Bundchen’s or Megan Fox’s. Some bodies would suffer greatly if they looked like that.

Aside from that, a lot of these posters are young women. You can tell just by clicking on their profiles. Women in that age range are actually still growing, and drastically reducing calories (read their entries; a lot of them are doing this) and working out like a fiend will not only damage their bodies in the present, but have long-lasting ramifications that will still harm them when they’re older.

And another thing – the last picture, with the ridiculous shoes. That’s from a magazine, and it worries me that some women actually think that’s real. It’s not. Every single picture in basically every single magazine has been doctored in some way. I always get a kick out of seeing Kim Kardashian, for example, in some racy magazine spread, looking all svelte, and then seeing her candid pictures from that same day, because there is a world of difference. Hell, look at pictures of celebrities on the red carpet, and then look at pictures of them in magazines from the same time period. It’s glaringly obvious that they were retouched to Hell and back to look that good, or were wearing 3 pairs of Spanxx (which Rebecca Romijn rather hilariously admitted to in an interview she gave after the birth of her twins why do I know this I hate myself.)

If you poke around on the blog some more, you see charming bits of wisdom like this:

Good lord. There is so much wrong with this, I can’t even get into it.

And the hypocrisy of the site – it just slays me! There are so many posts submitted by readers that say things like, “my guy friend asked me for nudes and I said I’d send them to him when I was 110 and he said what you’re crazy you’re beautiful and I went away and cried because he’s obvz totes lying because I’m a fat ugly cow.” I’m paraphrasing, but the scary part is, not by that much. Seriously. Look around on there. Other posts say things like, “the only time I don’t feel fat is when my stomach is growling because I’m starving myself.”

THIS IS NOT HEALTHY. THIS IS BULLSHIT.

I mentioned hypocrisy up there, right? Well, after being bombarded with woe-is-I posts like that, you’ll see posts like this one. Posts saying that eating disorders are BAD YOU GUYS TOTALLY. Because if you stick your finger down your throat after every meal or snack, it’ll take you one more week to reach your goal weight.

So yeah, instead of being bulimic, you should totally just starve yourself like all the normal girls. Think I’m being unfair? When EVERY.OTHER.POST on this blog is about starving yourself, I beg to differ.

But the worst thing I saw on this blog was this post. The stupidity, hypocrisy, and insecurity just…grrr. It’s absolutely vile to say that you need to learn to love yourself and accept yourself and then say the ONLY way you can do that is by being super skinny. Keep in mind, this is a 16 year old, 5’8″ girl saying she wants to be 115. God damn.

I just can’t with this, you guys.

Does it really have to be said that if you’re unhappy and insecure now, if you drastically cut your calories and exercise all the time and stress out about losing weight at any cost, the end result will only be that you will be skinny, most likely unhealthy, and STILL unhappy and insecure? Happiness and self-confidence are not tied to a number. Does that really have to be said?!

I don’t mean to be on my soap box about this. I don’t. I bet most of my readers are sane, rational women that are like, yeah, you’re not telling us anything new here. But this just really got a rise out of me today.

If you want to change your body, go for it. That’s wonderful. Eat better, get more sleep, drink more water, exercise more, and shed some extra weight. That’s great, more power to you. But please do not do yourself the disservice of thinking that (1) you need to look like whatever twiggy starlet with personal trainers and personal chefs and access to expensive beauty treatments is on the cover of whatever women’s magazine, or that (2) your every happiness is tied to how you look.

As a last note, I know that we pick the content we read. We pick what we believe in. We pick what we listen to. If we want to look at stupid pictures and stories about how we’ll be so happy and healthy and confident and boys will love us if we drop fifteen pounds below our healthy weight range spectrum, that’s on us alone and no one else.

But reducing it to that just makes me feel like I’ve given up on an important cause, and I can’t bring myself to do it. I struggled with body image issues for years. Mine weren’t really tied to weight, but to my physical appearance in general.

I was told every single day, over and over, in first and second grade, that I was unbelievably ugly. What can I say? Racist white kids in my very wealthy and virtually all-white school, and racist black kids in my town and on my school bus (an hour ride each way – joy). They made my life in those two years a living hell. And when you’re that young, you just can’t defend yourself against things like that. You don’t know how. And if everyone is telling you that, all the time, well…they must be right, right?

I had that ugly duckling complex for about twenty years. I still kind of do. When I was a teenager, I tied weight into it and just thought I was kind of porky. Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. I don’t really remember. I didn’t starve myself, because I like food too much, and because I’ve always been surrounded by my family and they all keep a close eye on what I’m doing, which included making sure I ate all three meals. But it was always kind of there in my head: you’re fat, and that’s part of why you’re ugly.

So I’m not saying this from some lofty oh-my-life-is-so-perfect-why-don’t-you-mortals-join-me perch. I understand body image issues – in my own way – and I understand how hard it is to get over them. I’m finally starting to get over them, and it’s liberating. And I hate the thought of other women being trapped even worse than I felt I was trapped back in the day. There’s no need for it.

That’s why I can’t just abandon blogs like that by thinking, eh, stupid women will read that and do stupid things, whatever. Maybe one day I’ll think that’s the only smart thing to do when it comes to something that strikes me as a pet peeve of mine. But until then, I’ll feel that if I say something, and it helps just one woman look at herself nude in the mirror and think, “you know, that’s okay,” then that’s something, and it made a difference.

Ugh. This is too weird and sappy. I’m going to go back to writing inane things.