“You’d be a rocket if you were 15 to 20 pounds lighter . . . but you’re cute now,” said the boy I’d been seeing.
I was shocked and hurt by his casual comment – and how he did not hesitate to express it. In the morning, I got a text saying I was too insecure, and he couldn’t be around someone with that mindset. He went on to mansplain to me despite the fact that I was happy and confident in my body now, this happiness was obviously temporary. He was unable to wrap his head around the fact while I may not have been a supermodel, I felt confident and sexy in my body.
These words sent me into a tailspin. As someone who has worked hard to get to the level of body acceptance and confidence I now possess, it was hard to hear words of criticism and doubt. I found myself wondering if that was true. What if I dieted, just long enough to lose those extra 15 or 20 pounds and see if he was right? Automatically, I was back in a place I’d fought tooth and nail to get out of. And this was worse, since it wasn’t the criticisms of strangers I imagined when I walked down the street, but someone who knew me; someone who I thought was attracted to me.
His meek offering of “you’re cute now” rang through my head. In the past year, I had never seriously questioned if the men I was with thought I was attractive. Of course they did, they were with me and they told me as much. But now I was plagued with insecurities, wondering if while they were with me, they were thinking “She’s cute, but she could be way hotter.” I had learned to ignore my love handles, the numerous flaws I noticed but assured myself nobody else did. And yet with one comment, I was back where I started, full of self-doubt.
Why can’t society accept that women who aren’t a size two are happy with their bodies? I am athletic. I have played field hockey for twelve years and I eat healthily. I am by all means fit, but there is always a nagging voice telling me that while I may be fit, I don’t look the part. Isn’t it time we stop defining “fit” with washboard abs and cellulite free legs?
If you believe brands like Aerie, we have moved past the outdated singular view of beauty. But is this a marketing tactic? Look at Aerie’s “plus size” model, Iskra Lawrence. As a teen, I looked up to her. She wasn’t traditionally skinny, but she was beautiful, had a successful modeling career, and a huge social media following. If she was beautiful, wasn’t I? However, the longer I looked at her, the more I realized she didn’t actually look like me. She had a flat stomach, despite her “plus size” figure. I have no doubt she was a champion of body image issues, having overcome them herself, but I couldn’t relate to someone who was larger, and yet still somehow toned. It felt like a half-hearted attempt on behalf of Aerie to garner public approval.
Media campaigns have long been criticized for their attempts to portray diverse body types. A Victoria’s Secret advertisement was pulled for using a body positive slogan while none of their models had an extra roll in sight. The cynic in me wonders if the wave of body positivity in advertising is just another way to make money. Most likely, it is. But is there still merit to it? Absolutely. No harm can come from showing young girls that all bodies are beautiful. While this is a good step towards acceptance, this mindset has clearly not been adopted by the general public. There is still a stigma that plus size women are unhealthy and uncaring about their appearance or physical fitness. Shouldn’t we know better than to judge physical fitness by physical appearance by now? Just once, I would like to indulge in a bag of chips without worrying that everyone around me is thinking how typical it is that I’m eating something unhealthy – that I must do this all the time.
We can preach self-love, but this won’t have a positive effect unless we make a serious effort to practice it as well. Snap judgements of those around us can be harmful. The boy who told me I should lose weight didn’t know how much I’d struggled with that in my younger years. He assumed that I was too lazy to put in the effort to be the rail thin woman he expected from me. In reality, I am curvy, I am healthy, and I am proud of how far I have come in loving myself.