A formerly skinny girl's observations on body image

Thanksgiving small-talk at my sister-in-law’s house led to what’s common at many tables: trash-talk. They weren’t gossiping, or being mean to each other.

They were being insulting, though. Each woman was topping the others by talking about how bad they themselves looked, criticizing themselves mercilessly.

Does this sound familiar? Odds are you’ve heard or been part of identical conversations. This talk is mostly likely part of the “I’ll put myself down before anyone else can” school of self-protection, or a dark-humor form of complimenting others.

Whether it’s a mix of low self-esteem or perfectionism or self-loathing or something less malevolent, it’s upsetting for me to hear it. I see strong survivors standing before me – two of the women were recently out of the hospital, one with life-threatening illness finally behind her. The other has decades of surgeries that have only exacerbated, not alleviated, her pain. The third has borne four children and prevailed over a challenging setbacks.

None are obese. They might be carrying more weight than they’re comfortable with, but the pounds don’t prevent them from managing jobs, households, and moderate to strenuous physical activity.

There was a fourth woman in the kitchen that day, too; a 15-year-old girl with self-image stress.

So when I wandered in and overheard the conversation, I was horrified. Not for my niece initially; more that these beautiful, capable, kind, and smart women were so full of hate toward themselves. My second reaction was more to protect the teen-aged girl, to prompt a bit of recognition that our bodies can be perceived as beautiful. I’m not confident at all that I was able to do that.

Somehow this talk is acceptable in our culture, and it needs to stop.

I should have stayed and listened longer, joined the group more subtlely, before opening my own mouth; instead, I reacted, saying, “Where is the self-love, ladies? Body positive – you are all beautiful and have so much more going on than this. Look at everything you’ve survived! You are beautiful the way you are!”

To which one of the women said, “Sure, you’re skinny, you can’t talk.”

Her words were so apt – I can’t talk if I don’t fit their notions of similarity. I’m not allowed to have a voice, even if – or perhaps especially if – it’s to compliment them. I didn’t mean to preach or be condescending, and I hope I wasn’t.

I am not skinny. I have my own body issues, my own difficulty with eating the right foods at the right times. While historically I have been thin, I am not now. I’m one size smaller than the woman who said that to me. I’m in the 10-12 category – not skinny, but not overweight. Out of shape. Bigger than I used to be, before my kids came. But smaller than the women around me.

Svelte, slender, thin – choose your word. In our culture, it's revered. But as a child, for me, “skinny” was an epithet – another child and I were nicknamed “Pin” and “Needle” for our bony appearance. My mother constantly worried the doctor would tag me as malnourished. The sting of those names hasn’t eased in the decades since, and the ante has only risen since. Those words hurt today even when a well-meaning, loving friend playfully dismisses me as skinny.

I am a mother – like three of them. I have long hair, like three of them. I’m married, like three of them. I’m working, like two of them. We live in the same town, we face similar struggles and hold similar views. And I’m unhappy with how I look, perhaps like them. But they say I’m not like them.

It’s ironic, really; someone at work was describing his wife and said, “She’s tiny; not like you, much smaller than you.” And I felt like I’d been insulted, though all my life I’d wanted to be “regular size.” I wanted to grab him and say, “No, don’t you see? I’m SKINNY!” I wanted to feel relieved I wasn’t perceived as malnourished anymore. But his words made me feel fat.

I often dress in bigger clothes than I need, to camouflage, to distract; I'm told they make me look thinner, instead of more average. I'm advised to show myself off. But when I do, women around me tend to be just slightly more hostile than if I wear baggier jeans, thicker sweaters.

Body image is such an amorphous target, it’s difficult to address out loud or in therapists’ offices. In the fitting rooms, it’s harshly assessed and tentatively accommodated.
At Thanksgiving, we eat too much and culturally it’s expected, despite the U.S.’s difficulty with obesity and diabetes. So we talk about how fat we are, paying lip service that barely covers our feelings of hopelessness. And then we sit down and load our plates with more food.  

Probably I’m tone-deaf to culturally appropriate girltalk; maybe I’m out of step with women my age. I feel that I have social skill deficits galore. Whether it’s due to that social anxiety or other reasons, I feel outside their circle, though my own body image discomfort is just like theirs.

While I want to cross the bridge to where they are, I don’t want to feel worse about myself, and I’d really love it if they could feel better about themselves. I wish they didn’t judge me, or rule my comments unworthy based on my size. I end up tongue-tied; compliments are shrugged off, commiseration ridiculed. I stand there mute, or I wander to join the guys, for whom body image is much less an issue, at least out loud.