SKINNY SHAMING…IT’S A REAL THING

A lot of people assume that, ‘If you are skinny, you have it easy.’

“I would always get taunted. ‘The only reason you’re good at ballet is because…you have no butt.’ This, that, and the other. ‘You look so skinny,’ ‘Are you sure that you eat?’ It’s always that. ‘You’re so boney,’ and the stereotype of a Black girl being so curvy; it is one of the reasons why I had such a hard time with body image,” admits Erika Durden, a senior dance major from Bellevue. 

These are passive aggressive statements, dressed up as compliments. I remember when I was younger, I was obsessed with gaining weight since I was so thin and tall, and a boy had told me I was ‘flat as a board.’ Words stick, no matter what your motives are; just leave someone’s body out of it.

“Society’s look on the perfect body isn’t skinny, it’s actually thick… like an hourglass figure, ” Durden says.

Even if you grow through puberty and happen to develop curves, you are never going to be able to please everybody. Likewise, till this day people will call me: ‘thick, flat, fat.’ Unfortunately, at this point humans use terminology incorrectly.

“People will say, ‘I want a skinny girl.’ Well, you got one. I’m skinny. I have no meat on my bones, I don’t have any curves; if I sit on our lap you’re going to feel my butt bones. That is really the definition of ‘skinny.'” Durden shares. 

“… [I]f I am interested in a boy and they are not interested in me back and it’s because I am so skinny it’s like, ‘Wow you look like the letter P, or you look like a box, there is no figure to you.'” Durden adds.

This is an underrated issue, that is often blown off due to a lack of relatability:

“I feel like skinny shaming happens a lot more because it doesn’t seem as much as an insult as it may actually feel,”  Maeve Dolan, a senior dance major from Blackhawk admits. 

Readers may not also expect this, but being slim can effect a dancer’s confidence:

“Well, this is from more of a dance perspective, since I was always skinnier and smaller than everybody else; my muscles didn’t grow as fast, and I was weaker in dance classes or in jumping and things,” Dolan says. 

A general consensus between both of these women was that finding clothing to fit their bodies is almost impossible.

“I have long legs, so pants would fit sometimes big at the waist, and big in the butt area. And it was just annoying and oh [and they were] big in the crotch area. It would just be very baggy, and that was just annoying too, because there is obviously fashion standards too, that you would also try to fit. Just a whole entire look everybody was looking for like, if your pants weren’t tight enough, it wasn’t the trend,” Dolan states. 

But here is a memo that we can all start living by:

“There is no such thing as normal. Everyone is entirely different. No one has the same body type; no one looks the same at all. I feel we just need to love ourselves as who we are and, you can’t morph yourself into a certain body type.” (Dolan)