December 25, 2006

Love Your Body, and the Other Bodies Too

I got the most fascinating gift at a recent white elephant exchange. It’s a little orange paperback titled “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life” by Wendy Shanker. At 5’8” and 115 pounds, I am probably one of the most unlikely people to be seen with this self-help memoir.

Nevertheless, I am glad that it found its way onto my reading list. If it had not, I would never have given a second thought to what it is like to be…

Here is where things start getting tricky. What does one call a woman who wears a size 12 or higher? Fat? Big-boned? Curvy? Or normal?

Whatever it is, it describes almost 70 percent of American women. At the same time at all the stores at which a young woman like me shops, my size four figure constitutes a size Medium. 

There have been plenty of special reports on the news and in women’s magazines about how the fashion industry ignores women who do not happen to have the frame of a 12-year-old boy. Yet it seems that there are only a handful of stores where an average American woman can shop. There is Lane Bryant, Old Navy and Torrid for the younger crowd. But what if you really like that dress at Forever21?

Whenever the subject has been brought up before, I thought that I could empathize because hearing “we don’t carry sizes that big” is not new to my shopping experience. I wear size 10.5 shoes and most of the cute styles in stores are too small for me.

After reading Shanker’s book, I feel ashamed of ever thinking that. Weight, as opposed to shoe size, is often a defining characteristic for women. While I have never had a man refuse to date me because I had the same size feet as he did, I am almost positive that his attitude would change if it were our sweater size that matched up.

There is plenty of debate about whether we ought to embrace the “obesity crisis” or battle it. A lifestyle that is dangerous to your life should never be set up as acceptable because a good majority of the population indulges in it.

Yet there are women who eat in a healthy way and exercise, but either by the choice of genetics or personal preference, remain a double-digit size. 

These women should not be forced to wear something that resembles a tent as a consequence.

Moreover, it is not a contradiction to say, “Big is Beautiful” if you have never been anything but skinny. In many ways, bigger women are enviable. The thin girls may look good in skinny jeans, but secretly we would kill for those double D’s.

To take Shanker’s advice, whether you are a blithe little thing or a proud, self-proclaimed “fat girl,” love your body. As cliché it sounds, the sooner we learn to love our own bodies, the sooner we are going to learn to love the ones that are nothing like ours.       

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