Imagine: you’re in fifth or six grade getting ready for school. You put on your bright blue Aeropostale t-shirt and your pink Victoria Secret leggings while looking for your Uggs. Of course you can’t forget to put on your Bath and Body Works perfume and watermelon lip gloss. That’s it, you are so ready for school. You start to head down the stairs and then it happens, a feeling that you’ve never felt before. Something that feels natural, yet kind of weird. You look down and you realize it; there they are. The moment you’ve read about in all the girl books. You now have boobs.
Growing up, I was always a curvy girl. I was the first one of my friends to get a bra and, oh boy, was that a day. Long story short, I visited my grandmother in fifth grade, and all of the sudden we were out at our local department store buying training bras. Mom was not so happy she wasn’t there for that “first” moment. Reflecting back, I’m realizing how prominent everyone’s reaction was to them, and how uncomfortable I was to have these things on my body. My v-neck t-shirts that used to be harmless, were now showing cleavage and filling out the shirts. I remember not soon after, my pants were getting smaller, but in a weird way. All my jeans fit my thighs, but my hips were getting bigger. I started to buy new jeans and had the hardest time figuring out what size I was. Finally I decided on a pair of jeans that fit my thighs and hips, but was way too big on my waist. This was the early 2000s, so there wasn’t a “curvy” part of the stores. There was no Fashion Nova; this body type— my body type, wasn’t seen in mainstream media.
While growing into my body, I tried so hard to be able to connect with someone in mainstream media that looked like me. Unfortunately at that time, there weren’t a lot of curvy role models to look up to. If there was, it was lingerie models. I remember the first time I saw a girl that looked like me. I was at Kohls, buying bras with my mother. At that point in time, all the bras for big busted girls were either the boring colors white, black, or tan. While I was trying to find my size, I looked up and saw a black and white picture of a model that was curvy. She didn’t have a flat stomach, she had thick thighs and stretch marks. She had my body type. I thought she looked so unapologetic to be her in this picture. After that, I walked around the lingerie section seeing myself represented. It felt good in a way; I finally felt like I wasn’t an outcast in this world.
The first time I remember being sexualized was at school. I was wearing leggings and a zip-up sweatshirt with a tank top underneath. The clothes were form-fitting, and they showed off my figure. The sweatshirt was not zipped up all the way, revealing some cleavage. My vice principal came up to me and asked me to zip up my sweatshirt, telling me that I was not dressed appropriately. I looked around— every girl around me was wearing the same thing, showing just as much as I was, if not more. I completely shut down and felt ashamed of my body. All I could think of at that moment was that it was because I was “big.” Looking back, it was feeding my insecurity. Every other girl that was wearing the same thing I was didn’t quite fill out their clothes yet. I didn’t understand the fact that I did; I just saw it as an insult. My body wasn’t appropriate.
After this happening many times throughout my middle school and high school career, there was one incident in particular that still gets under my skin. My senior year of high school I was the president of our A Capella group. We were asked to go to another town’s high school to sing for the school chairs in our district. We were asked to look nice. I decided to wear a black t-shirt dress with black tights and a long cardigan over it. Walking in, my male principal saw me and immediately called my first class teacher. I walked into the course to have a male professor tell me that the nurse needed to see me. Confused, I headed out of the classroom and walk to the nurses office. I get there and she has me sit down and closes the door behind me. At this moment, everything was running through my mind. Was my family okay? I just had a physica;l did something happen, did I get bad results back? The nurse sat down and said, “you are dressed too inappropriately to sing at this event.” I was in shock. I had no skin showing at all, and my dress was respecting the school guidelines. I was wearing tights and even a large cardigan, so everything was fully covered. She told me that the principal felt as though I was “showing my figure too much.” This was because my chest filled out the top of the dress. I immediately felt violated. All I could think about was my principal, the man I am supposed to trust with my education, thought my body was inappropriate.
During this time in a woman’s life, friends always talk about body image with one another and what they wished their body looked like. My friends were always asking for me to “share” my boobs with them. Referring to them wanting bigger boobs, but saying they only wanted part of the size mine were. My friends would say they wished they could cut them in half and give them out to all our friends so their breasts were a little bigger. Yes, that is a literal statement that has been said to me many times. Having them say this and not knowing the mental effect it had on me was always a struggle. Knowing that they want only a fraction of the size of my breasts, but saying the amount I had was too much was making me feel as though I have too much. Throughout this conversation, I would end up putting myself in a very insecure state. I would overthink my proportions and would care so much about what people would think.
At a young age I realized that my body type was looked at as sexy, lustful, and “a girl that looks like she wants it.” I saw that I was only represented in the media when there was a sexual atmosphere that surrounds a girls figure. I was always being told to pull up my shirt, not to wear things that are tight because I’d be showing my figure off to much, wear long shirts so they cover your butt, and to always wear “flattering” clothes. I always felt like I was treated differently than my straight-sized friends. At some point, I realized that being over sexualized is how people will compliment my body. A huge struggle of mine growing up was not just feeling sexy, but feeling beautiful. I didn’t think you could be both. I thought I was just to be lusted for, that no one would want to be with me because I was pretty, that’d they’d only want me for being curvy.
Having that mindset at peak insecurity throughout middle school and high school was really hard. As time progressed and the self love movement began, I was seeing myself represented in a way that I have never seen before. Girls that looked like me were modeling for fashion magazines, with clothes on. Time has made such a drastic change from the early 2000s with regards to portraying curvy girls in the media. Some companies like Fashion Nova and people like one of my favorite body positivity speakers, Ashley Graham, have helped facilitate this drastic change in the world. They gave an outlet for curvy girls to feel beautiful and to not only see themselves in a way that was over sexualized.