6 is the new 16

So i've been doing some research on one of my favorite subjects, body image. I've always been very interested in the idea of being thin and what that entails. When i was born on the Sunday morning of December 21st 1986, i weighed in at 6lbs 13oz. A normal sized baby. I was exclusively breast fed and at my 1 year mark i only weighed 12lbs. I hadn't even doubled my birth weight, something a baby should have done by 3 or 4 months. I was healthy but just tiny. I was a tiny child until i was 4 years old. At 4 i had my tonsils removed for health reasons. My parents were told that i would start to put on weight. Put on weight i did. From then on i was never tiny or even skinny again. In 7th grade i weighed 174lbs. Well above anyone else in my classes. In grade school i hated myself. A hatred that would get so bad as to try and take my own life. I had been on every diet known to man. I had done the exercising and the low calorie thing. I grew up in south Florida so i lived at the beach and in the pool. I rode horses. I biked everywhere. Nothing helped. If riding horses 5 days a week and swimming when i wasn't ridding didn't help i couldn't think of anything that would.

I never had friends. I was the shy fat girl and no one wanted to be friends with me. I laid low in school, never excelling but never failing either. Just floating on by. Come the start of 6th grade i was over joyed to be going to junior high. I was going to get away from all of the people i hated to much in elementary school. The kids that made fun of me and laughed at me and called my names. Junior high would prove to be the same thing, but with one difference. Jackie. Jackie was my only friend. She had enough confidence for the both of us. She brought me out of my blob like shell and helped my hold my head up high. She taught me to say "Fuck em All!" At first it was a false confidence. I did it but didn't really believe it. Jackie was my backbone over the many years of our friendship. And come high school, i had a confidence about me like no other. Now at 23 years old i can proudly hold my head high and say with full belief and confidence "I love my curves. I love my body. I'm proud to have hips. I'm proud to have an ass. I'm proud to be considered plus size. Fuck you skinny bitches!"

This leads me to my questions. Why is this country obsessed with skinny women? At what lengths will we go to achieve a size 2/4? Why are we being told you are only lovable if you can see your ribs?

I for one grew up thinking that i was only lovable when thin and since i could never achieve that goal, that i was never going to be loved by anyone. But i know now that i was very lovable. It might not have been the good kind of love, but when your 15 you're not looking for the good kind of love. You're looking for the guys to want you. And boy did they ever. I've never been without a boyfriend or girlfriend. i've never been without sex. I've always been wanted by someone. And not the guys who like the big girls either. It was the confidence i had about me that made me so attractive. If confidence is sexy and desirable then why are we so hard pressed to kill any kind of confidence young women might have about themselves in the country? Why are we still bombarded with images of size 0 models and super thin celebrities? Why do you have to be a size 4 to fit into any kind of designer clothes? Why is it that every time you pick up a women's magazine it will always have at least one cover story of "I lost 10 lbs in 7 days!" or "Diets of the stars"? And mens magazines are no different. If you want to buy a mens magazine that features fluffy girls you have to go looking for them. You will never see a Playboy or Penthouse or Hustler that features a Playmate of the month that is 5"4 and 140lbs, the average size of the american woman.

What about this says sexy?

                                                        

                                                        

                                                          

This is no way for a woman to look. Now i understand that some woman are naturally skinny. And i understand that some men just naturally are attracted to skinny women. But that's not what i'm talking about. I'm talking about the young girls who are starving themselves to death trying to look like Nichole Richie and Mary-Kate Olsen. Trying to look like the runway models in Madrid and Milan and Paris and New York. Trying to fit into that category of loveable. Getting plastic surgery at that age of 16 to have bigger breasts. Getting liposuction because they have the curves that women are supposed to have. No one tell these girls that women have more body fat than men because we need to be able to grow and nurture a child. That we have hips for easier childbirth. That we have breasts to feed a child. That if we were to have 8% body fat that we couldn't keep a pregnancy to full term. That we look the way we do for a reason. 

Women in this country and all over the world, need to stop striving to be stick thin. We need more beautiful full figured models. We need to see more real women on TV and in magazines. We need to stop hating our bodies. Start embracing our stretch marks. Loving our cellulite and sagging breasts. We need to teach our girls confidence. We need to be proud of our curves. Because when everything is said and done, what really is attractive across the globe in confidence. No matter what size you are.