I don’t think I’m the only girl out there who struggles to maintain a healthy weight. But it seems that whenever I talk about it, I’m met with stares of disbelie
“Why do you have to worry about your weight?” I get asked when I dare to mention that I feel self-conscious about it. Their surprise comes from the stigma that the term ‘struggle with your weight’ tends to be associated with battling obesity. But in my case, I strive to put on the pounds rather than drop them, in an effort to avoid hitting the underweight mark. It never fails to shock me, though, how others respond to my issue.
Most often, others are underwhelmed. “Eat a pizza,” is the most common piece of advice I hear. As if my weight problem—or any weight problem—were really that easy to fix. These same people, who clearly aren’t well practiced dieticians, never offer similar advice to others who want to lose weight. No one would consider telling them, “Just eat a salad,” because it is, with good reason, considered rude. But for whatever reason, critiquing my eating habits is seen as perfectly fine.
The reason that many shrug off my underweight woes is that they don’t see them as an issue. They look at me and are floored by how I can complain about being thin, when our society tries to make us believe that skinny is the goal. Or worse, they get suspicious, like they think I’m purposefully drawing attention to it in some sort of weird, “Look at me, I’m so thin!” way. I can’t even tell you how much this isn’t the case.
To be borderline underweight is frightening. For all those out there who don’t see this, I’ll just assume it’s because you weren’t with me at my last checkup. My doctor took one look at the scale and threatened medical intervention if I couldn’t gain something in the next three weeks. Or maybe because you weren’t standing beside me when I bumped into that childhood friend who immediately burst into hysterics over how bad I looked.
Even when someone does take the situation seriously, it is usually for the wrong reason. They think that my problem is not the threat of thinness itself, but how I got there. And the first conclusion that they tend to jump to is an eating disorder.
In retrospect, I guess I can’t fault them for watching out for me. That doesn’t mean, though, that I don’t feel like I’ve been punched in the gut whenever someone asks, “You’re…eating, right?”
“Yes,” I always assure them, and even though it’s true, there are plenty of people who don’t believe me. And the second someone becomes convinced of this eating disorder that I don’t have, they take it upon themselves to police my eating habits. I’m no longer allowed to get full during a meal, because to leave my plate anything short of polished earns me remarks like, “That’s all you’re going to eat?”
I get criticized for turning anything away. Never mind that I genuinely don’t like donuts, my friends always call me out for avoiding them. “You’re already thin,” they say, “One donut isn’t going to kill you.” Apparently, my preferences don’t matter so much as the fact that I can eat the donut, and therefore, I should.
So, when it comes down to it, why write all this? Is it to complain about issues that I’ve encountered as a naturally slender person? Not completely. The goal is to do more than to discuss my personal experiences. Thin girls everywhere may very well be just as self-conscious about their body as a girl of any other figure. But many don’t see commenting on these girls as a taboo. In fact, sometimes they even point it out because they see it as a compliment. They’ll exclaim, “You’re so thin!” like it has the same value as, “You have beautiful eyes!” (It doesn’t.)
The way I see it, a body is a body, and whether ours is curvy or boney, it should not be allowed to affect how we’re treated. The body we are born into is our own business. It only sets us all up for failure when we can’t let go of this belief that we’re allowed to talk openly about someone’s thinness. Doing so keeps this idea alive that some types of body get to be celebrated, while commenting on others is strictly taboo. It causes girls of different body types to compare themselves to one another, when this shouldn’t be the case at all. We keep preaching body equality, but I think in order to make that a possibility, we have to realize that something as simple as an off-hand comment about someone’s weight may carry a lot more meaning than we think.