SELF

Thin Women Are Real Women, Too

Stop defining who is real based on body type

Real Women: Women who are usually overweight (fat, fluffy, etc), loud, bitchy and obnoxious. Women in this category have adopted this term in lieu of being called BBW (Big Beautiful Women) or plus sized.

-Urban Dictionary

There is a damaging phrase being shouted and hashtagged on social media, “real women.” It sends the message that body size defines what makes a woman real. If the only real women on earth are average-or-larger, what does that make smaller-than-average women? Are we aliens? Cats, dogs, or hummingbirds? If we aren’t real women are we toys, wax statues or ghosts?

All women are real. Our bodies, our demons, and our stories are real.

I understand and support the sentiment of calls for media to portray “real women.” There’s a problem with the phrase, though. All women are real. Our bodies, our demons, and our stories are real. Eating disorders and other mental health issues related to body image are the reality many women live in. Someone very precious to me fights every day, with almost every bite, to recover and triumph over her eating disorder. She is a warrior, a real warrior.

Bashing thin women is as hurtful and harmful as calling a woman ‘fat’.

Being a thin woman is part of my story, for better and for worse. At my best, I feel powerful and feminine. At my worst, I feel flawed and insignificant. Always, I feel real. My anger is very real when women fighting to survive the mental health challenges of eating disorders are skinny shamed. Bashing thin women is as hurtful and harmful as calling a woman “fat.”

You don’t know what you don’t know.

If you haven’t heard a person’s life story and inner dialogue, you don’t know what you don’t know. And what you don’t know could kill them. Your insensitive comment could be the last thing they hear before finally following through on suicide. Maybe today their mental health is so fragile they can not handle one more judgement.

Less looking and more listening grows our compassion and strengthens the bonds between women.

We don’t know the underlying physical and mental health conditions affecting a person’s body unless they share their story with us. Until then, we only see what we choose to see. Less looking and more listening grows our compassion and strengthens the bonds between women rather than widening the divide. If you read on, you’ll learn a piece of my own story.

After my brother’s unexpected death I went from being a thinner-than-average child to becoming dangerously underweight. I was an adolescent going through puberty. At a time when my body needed more calories to develop physiologically I was starving it unknowingly.

Although I weighed nearly nine pounds at birth, I didn’t maintain a trajectory of being larger than average. All of my memorable years (post toddlerhood) people had described me as some version of the word “little.” My nicknames were Min and Minnie. With three older brothers there weren’t a lot of hand-me-downs making their way to the little sister. Instead, clothing was often passed to me from same-age peers who outgrew it long before it fit Minnie.

I began to feel more uncomfortable changing clothes for gym class and basketball practice but I didn’t recognize why. When girls in the locker room said, “You’re so skinny” it sounded like more of the same soundtrack I’d been hearing most of my life. I was aware of being thinner than my peers but I always had been. I didn’t think anything was different. I was Minnie, as usual.

The other girls my age were getting curvier as their busts and hips filled out. They talked about their first periods and I felt left out. I longed for the experience, as horrific as it sounded. I wanted to fit in and be an average girl, to feel normal instead of small. I started to feel more naked and awkward when everyone else needed a bra and I didn’t need one yet. Still, it seemed to fit my story of being the Minnie one in the group. I didn’t think anything was wrong.

Understandably, it took awhile for my grieving mother to realize I was undernourished. She was suffering the loss of a child and navigating single parenthood post-divorce. Although my portions became insufficient for a would-be growing body I still ate at every meal. There were no obvious red flags. Due to her own trauma, Mom might not have seen a red flag if it was waving in her face. My father lived hours away and didn’t see me often.

It had been a hellish year. My grandfather died and his funeral was my first experience with death. Several months later my parents divorced and I moved far away from my childhood home. Toward the end of the year, I experienced the toughest trauma of my life. I woke up to the sound of my mother sobbing and the reason was devastating. My big brother was dead.

My brother was gone and my family was numb with grief. It’s not surprising my slowly shrinking body was overlooked. Eventually, I went to a doctor appointment and they determined I needed intervention. I was excused from school for about six weeks to attend a partial hospitalization program. Thankfully I didn’t relapse after treatment as so many patients do. Since then I’ve maintained a healthy weight for my body type, which happens to be thinner than average in this country — the U.S. Does that make me or my story less real?

Words trigger trauma. Decades later when someone calls me “skinny” it is triggering. My emotional memory dredges up shame, grief, and loneliness. As time goes by I don’t feel the effects as strongly. I’ve been healing intentionally, bit by bit. I’m learning how to listen to myself rather than the words of others. I tell myself I am powerful. But trauma leaves marks in our brains and on our hearts. One word can shatter the fragile psyche of someone experiencing PTSD.

We don’t know each other’s stories until we listen and share. Now you’ve heard a bit of my story. Just one of the billions of women in this world. Women who are bullied for being overweight or shamed for being underweight in a culture with warped body imagery. Women who binge, purge, diet, and starve as they fight the demons inside themselves.

Some of these women are precious people in my life. I’ve heard parts of their stories. Every bite eaten, every pound gained or lost, every day is a battle. I can assure you they are real women and they are fighters. It is not okay to dismiss them because they are thinner than average or to glorify them for being larger than average. Let them just be in their bodies.

What can we learn when we hear a voice from within rather than seeing only the surface? The Body Positive is an organization working to build a supportive community through sharing vulnerable stories.

“We founded The Body Positive in 1996 because of our shared passion to create a lively, healing community that offers freedom from suffocating societal messages that keep people in a perpetual struggle with their bodies... We have made a commitment to honestly telling our own stories, and offering space for others to do the same without fear of judgment, comparison, or criticism.”

The toxic culture of body judgement changes one person at a time, with our words, actions and compassionate listening. Let’s lift each other up instead of judging, competing, and belittling. Empowerment starts with telling our own stories. I am a thin woman. I am a healing woman. I am a real woman. This is a little, bitty part of my story.

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