Body Positivity Should Encompass Both Extremes
Recently, my friend told me about an article she read about beauty trends in China. It mentioned trends like the A4 waist challenge, where people were challenged to hide their waist behind a piece of A4 paper, the vertical way. The most recent challenge was a challenge for teenage girls to squeeze themselves into children's clothing at Uniqlo. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
This article made me think of a certain series of events from when I was younger that seem so minor, but mean much more to me now.
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It begins with a pair of skinny jeans.
When I was in middle school, over seven years ago, all I wanted was a pair of skinny jeans. My mom never said it, but I could sense her aversion to it. They were tight, it was hard to move in them, it just wasn’t practical. 12-year-old me didn’t care about any of those things. All I knew was that everyone else was wearing them and they looked good on other people. I was convinced that I needed to wear skinny jeans to look good.
Back then, I didn’t know anything about body image. I didn’t know what it meant to be skinny, how important it was to other people. You could say I was ignorant at the time, but what tween wasn’t self-centered?
Eventually, I got my skinny jeans. I tried them on at the store and I loved them. This was it. I was going to look good in school. I swore to myself, and to my mother, that I would wear skinny jeans for the rest of my life. They didn’t swish like those other jeans I had when I walked.
A couple years later, flare pants came back for a short while. I scoffed at them, saying that skinny jeans would always be superior.
Now, nine years later, 20-year-old me is about to swear off skinny jeans. Why? A number of reasons.
The Mom Jean is back
Trends come in waves: they stop for a while, but eventually they’ll be back, perhaps with a slight change. We’ve seen this happen with the aforementioned flare pants, the denim jackets, and…the mom jeans.
First of all, the mom jean is amazing. It’s slightly baggy so that it’s comfortable, but not too baggy that it’s uncomfortable to walk in.
I'm ready to trade in my restricting skinny jeans for some mom jeans.
Secondly, it is human nature to want what other people have.
So, when we see other people wearing mom jeans, we think that it looks great. We want that for ourselves, we buy it for ourselves. As more and more people see others wearing it, they will decide to wear it themselves. And thus, a trend is born.
Sometimes, when I see other people wearing similar clothing, I think to myself that it’s just too basic. I want to be different and do different. No one wants to be seen wearing the same thing as someone else at the party.
But I think our will to blend in with the crowd is stronger than our will to be different. Why? Most people will conform to the majority in an effort to blend in. It’s difficult to be different. History has shown that being different leads to ostracization, exclusion, and bullying. It happens in school. It happens with racial prejudice and racism. It’s discrimination. And no one wants that.
Body Image Awareness
I’m more aware of body image now. It’s something I’ve struggled with for a while, really starting from when I wanted to fit into those prom dresses back in my senior year of high school. I tried working out, I tried eating less, I even swore off sugar for a whole month. And I love my desserts. But nothing worked. Although I felt healthier for some time, I didn’t reach my goal. After I convinced myself that I could just have one cookie and that would be it, my old habits came flooding back.
I thought skinny jeans made me look fat.
My relationship with body image made me stop liking skinny jeans because I started thinking that they just weren’t too flattering on me. They made my legs look big and chunky. My ideal body image came back to smack me in the face whenever I looked in the mirror.
It’s a fact that dieting and exercising frequently is hard.
This is a controversial opinion but hear me out. In my case, the body image ideal wasn’t all bad, because it encouraged me to exercise & eat healthier so that I can be a better version of myself, not that there was anything that’s wrong with me before that.
We shouldn’t think of eating healthy as dieting, but as a positive change in lifestyle that will benefit us for years to come. And we definitely shouldn’t be starving ourselves in this change in lifestyle, but rather eating the right portions and nutrients to fill our bodies with fuel.
Although I am all for body positivity, I think there’s a limit that goes both ways.
We should promote that curvier people are beautiful. But we should maybe add in an extra line. As long as they are healthy.
Diabetes, high blood pressure, and other cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of death and mortality in the United States. Yes, we should promote body positivity, and we shouldn’t judge ourselves by a number on the scale, but the fact of the matter is that people in the United States are obese. That is a problem.
As a nursing student, we read chapters upon chapters about diabetes and heart disease. We read about how to care for diabetics as a nurse, how treatment plans look, and how we should educate people. Why? Because obesity is pandemic here. So, exercise. Stop eating so much sugar and junk food. It’s not good for you.
I think if we continue to say that it’s okay to be "big" (which honestly is a relative term), we have to emphasize that we must also be healthy. Look after your health. And I’m not saying that everyone has to fit into some cookie cutter molding. No. Everyone is different. We should embrace our differences and lead our best lives. It’s what makes us unique. We should love ourselves, our best selves, our healthiest selves.
We should never tell ourselves that we aren’t good enough because we don’t fit into our ideal body image. Our ideal body image shouldn’t be a certain measurement or weight but should be some vague blur that isn’t an image at all, but a list of things we should do to keep ourselves healthy.
I want to emphasize that there is no good in body shaming. No one should ever do it, not to themselves and not to others. After all, what’s the point? It doesn’t benefit anyone, not the one doing the shaming, and definitely not the person being shamed.
Body image goes the other way too. Some people go overboard trying to reach their idealization. No.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with being skinny.
I have seen people bullying and criticizing others for being “too skinny.” But some people are naturally like that. They’ll eat as much as the next person, and try as they might, they won’t gain weight. If we haven’t lived in the other person’s shoes, we have no right to judge.
I have also seen first-hand people who eat tons of junk food and large amounts at meals, but they won’t ever gain a pound. That doesn’t mean that they’re healthy though.
Just because a person looks a certain way on the outside, it doesn’t represent what they are on the inside.
The Clothing Size Debate
In America, plus size clothing and plus size models have always been a hot topic. It’s true that we should normalize that and should accept it.
But coming from the other side, the side that rarely has a voice, some people have to wear small clothing. As an Asian American, I find it difficult to find clothing that fits me. It’s not because I’m overly skinny. It’s because that is how I was born, what my genes have coded for. I am short, I am smaller than the average American. There is nothing wrong with that.
But it was always a difficulty finding clothing that fit me, especially jeans. American style jeans are just way too long and with big waistbands. Sometimes, I wish there were diversity there too. Lack of the correct clothing size can make people feel as if they are being excluded, just because they are built smaller.
Body image is something I still struggle with today. I work on loving myself the way I am, but sometimes those feelings of disgust at myself still exist. Because no matter how much we praise body positivity and self-love, at the end of the day, many of us still want to fit into that ideal. I’m starting to accept that I’ll never be able to look like those Chinese drama actresses, but I think this is a long road that many others are on themselves. I hope we all push through to the end to find our happiest, healthiest selves.
A/N: This is all based on my own thoughts and ideas, and I am not trying to call anyone out. I just wanted to share my own viewpoint on one of the many controversial topics gripping our society today. Feel free to disagree with me, but please do it in a civilized manner.
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