Reply #27: Body image is our burka

[Gormy Cuss]

Let me start by asking that you read my entire post before you react because I do not intend to criticize you for trying to maintain a healthy body. I agree that ridiculing people based on body types is just not acceptable or productive in terms of supporting positive self image.

Reading your post, I was with you until your last paragraph, when you slid into the same trap of defending your body shape by saying you haven't let yourself go,
which just read to me like the same sort of silly defense as the 'mostly muscle' statement. Should people with big thighs, saggy butts, cellulite and stretch marks feel shame? I know extremely fit women who have big thighs, cellulite and stretch marks and it's not because they let themselves go and then worked back. In the case of the big thighs, it's structural --- her body type is built like that. I know another woman whose stomach muscles are solid as a rock, yet she has stretch marks everywhere from her stomach to her thighs because she's the mother of multiples, and quite bluntly, one's skin is only elastic to a certain point.

If you are happy in your own skin, and skinny is the right way for your own body, who should argue with that? The problem with fashion and other media images in this country is that skinny has been the only acceptable look for too long and the backlash cometh.

If you find it annoying to be dissed as a skinnie, image that fashion and media replaced all the Lara Flynn Boyle types with Roseanne Barrs and you'll appreciate why the ridicule happens. From the time I was a teen I would check the ht/wt charts in the teen and women's magazines because I need the reassurance that I wasn't fat. I was always in the middle of the weight range for my height, yet needed the constant validation because based on media images I was a cow. By the time I hit 30, I got over it. I realized that what was important was to maintain a healthy size for my body. Screw the media. It's time to shed that burka.

I hope I made my point without ticking you off.