This week I sat down and searched the internet for articles and pictures about a common epidemic “Skinny vs Curvy.” Sadly, I didn’t have to dig too deep to find a handful of garbage waiting for me to stick my nose in. Just like every other women, I kept searching, and clicking, and reading until I finally got sick of the ignorance.
To all the men out there that can’t understand why we spend hours among hours critiquing ourselves in front of the mirror, wondering how we can get a flatter stomach, how we can get better boobs and make our scars disappear, it is because half of us believe we have to live up to a perpetual standard made by the faint opinions of so many of you. I run across articles almost every day talking about the type of bodies men prefer and the type of women they go after. They give us ideal bust, waist and hip measurements and we are supposed to mold our bodies into them. If we don’t reach those you better believe we will do just about anything to literally form our bodies into these measurements. I for one, am very guilty of falling into this disgusting trap for a couple of years. Thankfully, I now recognize how much it was hurting me rather than helping me become a better woman.
There have and, unfortunately, always will be standpoints on what is attractive and isn’t , and I am not here to tell you which one you should think is. That is what almost every other asinine article on the internet is about and I will never tell someone why or how their body isn’t working for them. There should be absolutely no standard we have to morph our bodies into to be viewed as appealing and desirable. The epidemic our women are facing is one that in no way builds them up to be better women, but breaks them down because of what ignorant eyes see them as. Every little piece of them is broken down and studied to evaluate the fact of whether or not they are attractive. The saddest part about this is society isn’t breaking down their character, they are breaking down how their collar bones stick out, how bad of a complexion they have and how if you aren’t “this way,” you have no reason to love “your way.”
Until I can remember, I have always seen women bending over backwards for men. Whether it’s their boyfriend, boss or husband, they are always jumping through hoops for men. Now this is a natural instinct of most women because being loving and having a caring nature is sort of ingrained in our being. With this being said, we do a lot for others (I am not asking for your sympathy, we love doing this) but the one thing we owe to ourselves is how we want to look. If we want to wear our baggiest t-shirt and forget the makeup, then we should do it, for ourselves. If we want to put on our pumps and cat-eye eyeliner for no reason at all, then get up and do just that. You owe it to nobody but yourself to be who you feel like being today and everyday. With this being said, you can love your body for how it curves or doesn’t curve, and you absolutely should. Do not kill yourself at the squat rack because your boyfriend wants more meat on your bones. If you want strong legs and a better ass then go get it for yourself. If you want to be thinner or love running, then go outside and run for heaven’s sake. It isn’t up to anyone but yourself to look how you want to look. The only thing I will tell you to do is to take care of yourself, love yourself and respect yourself enough to do whatever it is you have to do to make yourself happy. It isn’t up to society, your boyfriend or your friends to tell you you should lose weight or put on muscle, it isn’t up to them to tell you how you should be happy.
Growing up as a woman is more harsh than people think. From the time you open your first magazine to the moment you finally go against the “pretty standard,” we are continually drowning in ads telling us how to get the perfect body, perfect skin and perfect hair. And that isn’t even the worst of it. I even came across articles telling women how they should act to attract men, “What turns men on in a girl” and “What body type men prefer.” This epidemic we, as women, are facing is wrong in every way. If we truly wanted to be thinner or have more curves, we shouldn’t be doing it for anybody but ourselves. Afterall, it is our body we will be living with the rest of our lives.
I am so sick of seeing the media tell women how to act and how to look. If you want to continue telling us how to act and how to look, at least do it for our own sake and not because we need to impress people. It is not our duty to kill ourselves at the expense of looking desirable, and it is certainly not our duty to fulfill the desires of people who look at us for nothing but the way our body curves and doesn’t curve. For one, I do not owe it to anybody, not even my own boyfriend, to look desirable everyday. However, I do owe him my love and affection, my respect and attention and everything else I can give him as a human being, not as a dog. The only thing you absolutely owe people is your love. We need to be helping people grow, helping them expand and take on a better life, despite what they look like. After all, 40 years from now you probably won’t even care how great of an ass you have as long as you have the people you love by your side.
Now I will hit on the fact that skinny women get just as much hatred towards them as overweight women. First and foremost, nobody should be slandered or thought less of because of their body. I have, and always will know that is the shallowest way you can look at someone. If the first thing you think of when you see someone is “big girl” then you have much bigger problems to deal with, my friend. Since I can remember, I was always nagged at about my weight. And not for being overweight, but for being thin. Thankfully, that stuff doesn’t bother me or I would probably be overly self conscious like most women in our world. So to all the people who like to comment on women’s bodies, think twice and realize how much of an impact your “harmless jokes” are.
Why does this even matter so much what we look like? For heaven’s sake, we are given this soul and mind and heart that have the ability to be so out of this world but we’re missing that whole point because we are so utterly amused with morphing ourselves into something appealing to the eyes of shallow minds. If we focused as much energy on perfecting our character as much as we spent time on perfecting our eyeliner and stretch marks, maybe we would see a lot more amazing things happening.