No One Prepared Me

February 23, 2005

I am 5’1 and weigh somewhere between 107 and 110 lbs. (I say between because I haven’t seen a scale since early January). And I don’t say that to brag; I say it to give you an idea of who’s speaking here. I walk just about everywhere I need to go on campus. I eat Healthy Choice meals for no other reason than they taste good (though I get the feeling that some people don’t believe me). I like tank tops and jeans, skirts, and shorts that sit on my hips; they’re comfortable for me. I like the way I look. Is it wrong of me to want to keep it that way? Is there something wrong with my being a thin black girl?

Over the centuries, the ‘standard’ of beauty has changed over and over, always switching sides to where either being fat or being skinny ends up being demonized. Yes, I think that you should be proud of and happy in your body and not merely conform to what pop culture says is beautiful. But that then begs the question: is it then the right of those who love you to discourage you from that if they believe that you are buying into the stereotype? I mean I love the way I look, honestly. I have enough bust and hips and enough slope in my waist to be ‘curvy’; perhaps I’m not happy with my thighs but it’s hereditary and not much I can do about that. I think that if there’s something about your body that you want to improve, that is completely your prerogative. But your body is yours and no one else’s. You have to live in it; you have to be happy with it.

I personally don’t think the body stereotypes perpetuated by society today are healthy, emotionally or physically. Granted some women can look like that but they are not for everyone. I mean, really. Contrary to popular belief, the average woman is not 5’10 with legs up to her armpits, perfectly flawless skin, and a 22” waist.

I didn’t mean to get up on a soapbox; I’ve just been thinking a lot lately, on account of a book I’ve been reading called The Black Female Body: Self-representations of the African American Women, particularly an essay by Margaret K. Bass called “On Being a Fat Black Girl in a Fat-Hating Culture”. Within the first few pages, she repeats the sentence, “No one prepared me for living life as a fat person,” several times. No one prepared me for life as a skinny person when I was little. I was called “skeleton”, “skin ‘n bones”, those kinds of things. Not that I could help it much; it rather came with being small. I went from skinny to rather chubby as I grew, back down to what I thought I was happy with. Gained weight when I came to college, lost weight again. Gained weight when I went to Russia, lost weight student teaching. But this past Christmas, I got a lot of the same comments about being skinny when I went home. I have indeed lost about seventeen pounds in the past year and I’m happy with the way I look now. I don’t want to lose any more weight; no, it wouldn’t be healthy for someone of my size.

OK, I’m getting down off the soapbox. I’m done. Just needed to siphon off some thoughts that ran through my head on the way to and from class this morning. You may return to your daily lives now.