It’s that time of year again…
For almost twenty years, top models have stripped down and thrown on the cutest (and sometimes priciest) lingerie in the game. From Candice Swanepoel and Karlie Kloss to Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, they’ve provided us our body inspo for the past few years. So every year around the holidays, we grab our biggest container of Christmas cookies, and sit down to watch these gorgeous ladies strut their stuff while we wallow around in self pity (we’ve all been there).
While these models definitely are gorgeous, there is one very important thing to remember as you sit down to watch the VS Fashion Show – it is perfectly fine to not look like them.
As young girls in this society, it’s hard not to let these publicly determined, “perfect women,” cloud our perceptions of beauty. We starve ourselves, we over-exercise, we pinch, we pull, and we beat ourselves until there’s nothing left, just in hopes of being “beautiful”. While we’re at an age that is still so influenced by the media, we need to remind ourselves that no weight, body type, skin color, or other identifier is more beautiful than the next. The clothes we try on often don’t even fit the mannequins the way they’re supposed to, and that is okay. Each and every body is different from the next, and no person, no store, no news outlet should make you feel as if yours is inferior to another.
Being skinny does not make you frail and fragile, but beautiful, strong, and powerful. Being curvy does not make you unattractive, but breathtaking and fearlessly beautiful. We are all made differently and there is no possible way that we can look exactly like the next person. We need to embrace that.
So yes, we might not all be 5’9”, and we might not be able to get our hair in those perfect loose curls, but that is perfectly fine. It’s time to embrace our shortness, and love our food babies, or lack thereof. There’s no perfect weight. Skinny or curvy, every single weight is just as beautiful and deserving as those making the cover of a magazine. Your worth is not determined by the size of your jeans or the color of your skin. Your worth is determined by who you are as a person, and how you treat those around you. So as you’re watching these models walk down the runway, remember this – you are more than a jean size, and you can probably get a bra just as cute as the ones you see… for about $12 at Target.