For as long as I can remember, I have been told that I was pear. No, people were not comparing my sweet personality to the flavour of the fruit, but rather saying that my body proportions resemble that of a pear. In other words, I’m narrow up top and wider on the bottom. While yes, this description does fit the general shape of my body, I grew to resent being labelled as such.
I can remember flipping through magazines that promised articles such as “jeans for every body type” or “the perfect swimsuit for your curves.” I hungrily flipped through the magazine pages, desperately seeking the model who fit my body type, thinking, “finally, I’ll find a pair of jeans that don’t gap at the back” or “maybe bathing suit shopping this year won’t be the worst.” But I was always left disappointed. Those models never looked like me. For starters, the idea of a pear-shaped body usually got collapsed into the category of “curvy” and while I do have curves, I only curve in one place. The pear-shaped models were either curvier than I was or not curvy in the same way, or sometimes just not even curvy at all.
For a long time, I thought it was just me who had this problem. That, for some reason, the fashion industry just couldn’t get the idea of pear shape right. I was self-conscious of my curves—correction, curve. I felt like I was some oddball in a universe full of people who perfectly fit into their categorical moulds. Then one day, while my friend—who has a very opposite body type to me—was complaining about how hard it was to find jeans that fit, I realized something. It wasn’t just pear shape that they were getting wrong, but every body type. Apple, boy, triangle, hourglass, sporty, peach, pumpkin, parsnip, pear—you name it, they label it and make clothes that only kinda sort of fit it.
Because here’s the thing: PEOPLE AND THEIR BODIES ARE NOT FRUIT. Nor are they geometric shapes, or adjectives, or decorative items. No two people will ever have identical bodies or body types, so we need to quit trying to categorize the way we look. Instead, we need to embrace our own unique shape.
So I encourage all of the pears, apples, oranges, bananas, and parsnips out there to embrace every inch of your body and own the beautiful shape that you were born with.