“Society” and beauty.
Growing up I was made to feel bad about being skinny. My classmates called me “Stringbean”, “Popeye’s Olive”, “Skeleton” and barraged me with other names.
All around me I saw girls with body parts that I didn’t have and still don’t have and I was made to feel inferior to them; like less of a female because my body proportions were different. By 9 years old, so many girls in my 4th grade class were wearing training bras while I still looked like a boy from the waist up.
They had these exciting new protrusions from their chests and by 5th and 6th grade, these little bumps were matched with hips and clearly visible asses.
Meanwhile I pulled out my General Science textbook and reread the chapter on puberty until the pages were tattered and crushed. I cherished those three lines about late bloomers and underlined them triumphantly. One day my day would come.
I’m 20 years old this year and my time still has not come.
When I left primary school I weighed a whopping 60 pounds and by the first day of high school I weighed 72 pounds. Nobody was happier than I was. I was 12 pounds happier and I thought well on my to blooming.
I still have not bloomed.
When I hit those dangerous teenage years of 15 and 16 I was on the winning team. All of a sudden being skinny was all the rave. Teenagers walked around my all girl high school eating salads for lunch and munching on carrot sticks while greedily eyeing the real food at the lunch table. Everybody was dieting and going to the gym and working out 30 minutes everyday.
5 years and a few IQ points later, young girls are still caught in that vicious cycle.
As they lean over toilet seats vomiting up the scraps they had for dinner, or take laxatives, they blame Vogue and MTV and America’s Next Top Model for their insecurities. Society is at fault, they say. Society told them they weren’t pretty enough.
But what or who is this society that is being tried for all kinds of crimes against young women?
Society isn’t a committee that decides what beauty is. Society isn’t a panel of people who dictate what beauty is:
- Blonde hair
- Blue eyes.
- 24 inch waist.
- Slender hips.
- Thigh gap,
- Collar bones.
No. This is not society.
Nothing annoys me more than young women who subscribe to eating disorders and self hate and blame it on society. They say, “society defines beauty as having clear skin, long slender legs, skinny waist, C cups etcetera etcetera.”
No. Society does not. YOU do.
My point is that society has so many parts, so many facets with so many different opinions of beauty. Yes, there are parts of society that think beauty is having a thigh gap and pronounced collar bones. But there is another part that has Kim Kardashian and Nicki Minaj as cover girls.This part considers women with thighs that touch, double D breasts and some meat on the bone as beautiful.There are parts of society that praise Blake Lively for her blonde hair and parts that like Beyoncé’s hair extensions, parts that like Amber Rose’s bald crown and pockets that rave endlessly about Corinne Bailey Rae and Solange’s natural hair. There are persons in society that consider beauty as all shapes and sizes.
So why do you cling to the aspect of this “society” that makes you feel bad about yourself?
Everybody has insecurities. Insecurities are good for us. They build character and they prevent us from being arrogant and self conceited. But there is a fine line between being aware of your insecurities and being superficial. There comes a point when you decide being healthy, happy and alive is infinitely better than being pretty.
People blame society everyday for the insecurities of teenage girls.
Society does not create insecurities, it feeds them. I don’t absolve society of the role played in this downward spiral in the self esteem of young girls but society is not the criminal here.
I live in the same society and for years I felt inadequate for not having that hour glass shape. In this same society I have wanted the opposite of what so many girls want. My “society” shows me rounded buttocks and full hips and actual boobs. For years, my “society” told me I wasn’t enough. So many thin girls gorge on milk shakes day in day to gain extra pounds, they hit the gym and squat all night to achieve that ass that everybody thinks is necessary. Every girl has her “society” and sees something around her that tells her she isn’t enough. Skinny girls are told to fatten up, chubby girls are told to diet.
Do you. Be you and be happy doing it.
But if you choose not to, if you choose to drown in your insecurities don’t blame society.
Society is the skinny models on the catwalk, society is the millions of people suffering from obesity, society is the bulimic and the anorexic, the Blake Livelys, Kim Kardashians and Demi Lovatos, the Rihannas and the Iggy Azaleas. Society is me. Society is you.