Waifs, Runts and Bean Poles

What I am about to say will undoubtedly cause an angry backlash. Understand this before you read on...

When I was in elementary school I used to weigh 65 pounds and was the smallest kid in the class. People didn't make fun of me for it though. I found that my size actually engendered a paternal or maternal instinct in others, who felt that they needed to protect me. Skinny guys don't catch that much flak though, most of the time. Skinny girls however, are the butt of many jokes. Skinny girls are made fun of constantly. Especially the tall ones.

In the schoolyard there are a lot of different reasons that kids get made fun of. It is not unusual, unfortunately as it may be, for bullying and emotional hurt to be thrust about - but skinny girls get more than their fair share of the abuse.

It has been a good fifteen years since I was last on a schoolyard in between classes. The playground is far behind me and my memories of it are fuzzy at best. But still, all around me, skinny girls are encountering the ire of others. This time though, the "reason" is different. Instead of their bodies being put down by their peers, they've become the target of something else. Their bodies, once derided, are now seen as "beautiful". They fill our magazines and our television sets - these amazingly perfect bodies, with no fat in sight and muscular curves throughout.

Something odd happens along the way, on the journey from adolescence to adulthood. These bodies that were once made fun of by so many, are apparently now the cause of much grief. Suddenly, these bodies in the magazines, are making people feel badly about themselves. There are cries that these bodies should be removed from those glossy pages, and be replaced with something more "real".

These bodies become something of a myth. "Those aren't real women," say some. "No one actually looks like that," say others.

But the reality is, that women that look like this - with perfect, slender bodies - do exist. They are real. They work hard for their bodies. They do things that others won't. They are not just 'lucky' and blessed. They eat healthily, they learn enough about their bodies to know how to keep them in the best shape possible, and they stay active well past their days on the schoolyard. It is not easy to be thin. Things are not, as one might say with a tinge of irony, all gravy and no bones.

To say that these women are not real, dehumanizes those body types that cause us to react so strongly. The body is the most personal, intimate thing in each of our lives. We can never get away from our bodies. They are always here with us. It is only natural for us to compare our bodies to other bodies, and this often leads us to feeling bad.

But it is not the fault of beautiful people that others don't like what they see in the mirror. Calling certain women "real women" depersonalizes and dehumanizes those few women that attain a body that others want. It places the blame for how we feel about ourselves on somebody else. It is the same as saying to that photo in the magazine, "It is YOUR FAULT that I don't like myself." The phrase 'unrealistic expectations' comes up a lot when talking about women with perfect bodies. But results like these are not impossible to attain, just very hard to get. It is a constant struggle.

It is true that some magazines airbrush their photos of women before printing them. To say however that no one looks that amazing all the time, is a lie. There are women that look like that walking down the street every day. Many of these women were not always thin. A lot of size zeroes, were once size fourteens. A lot of XS shirts hang in the closets of women who once only fit into an L.

By no means do I think that everyone should look like this. There is an obsession with the shapes of our bodies that haunts us from the cradle to our death beds. Eating disorders are a serious, tragic and far too common occurrence in both men and women these days. But to accuse the hard work of the truly fit for these kinds of evils is nonsense. And this really does matter, because until a person takes responsibility for how they feel without blaming it on others, it will always be difficult for them to feel any better.

I am using the words 'thin' and 'beautiful' interchangeably here, which some may object to. I don't think you have to be thin to be beautiful, but I do think that many thin women are indeed beautiful. I am using the words 'thin' and 'perfect' interchangeably as well. Does a body have to be thin to be perfect? No, not at all. But that is neither here nor there.

Slender women are real women. The extreme reactions these bodies cause, from lust right on through hate, are as childish as the hurtful words that were once hurled upon these women when they were girls. The energy spent on the debate over what kind of women should be photographed would be better spent trying to figure out why we don't feel happy in our own skin. It would be better spent figuring out why we all want our bodies to be different. It would be better spent trying to realize that you can never love your body while spending so much time focusing distaste on the the bodies of others.

So much hatin' goin' on out there in the world!

Well shucks people, can't we all just get along?