Real Women have curves!

Am too lazy to type something fresh, so I reposting another old post, inspired again by Margelina :)

A lot is discussed about the problems faced by overweight women. I am still to come across an article discussing the problems faced by naturally thin women. Naturally thin women …They do exist!! They do face discrimination, and life is as tough for them as it is for an overweight woman…. Today, people from all over the world want to ban skinny models. Now skinny is OUT. When was it ever IN? Oprah Winfrey went as far as to say that ‘Real women have curves”! Well, then I am not much of a woman!! I am 5'2 and Weigh about 105 pounds. Skinny? Yeah, that I am, super skinny—But Anorexic? NO!!!!!...Not all skinny girls/women are anorexic, or suffer from some eating disorder. And they are real women too! But who is going to listen. I have always been skinny, tried everything under the sun to put on weight. All those high calorie diets, visits to the doctor, working out in the gym, even taking birth control pills with a non-existent sex life!! Nothing worked. I was 85 pounds for at least 10 years. No fluctuations. My weight just refused to move.

I tried hard to accept myself, to make peace with my body, but the whole world seemed more worried about my weight. I had strangers coming up and asking me to eat something. I tried being polite and smile, I tried being rude and telling them to sod off. I actually came up with witty remarks to get at them. Once when a filled out Punjabi aunty (In Delhi), sitting besides me in the bus, remarked “why are you so thin beta, don’t you eat anything?” I replied, with my best poor me look “ No, Aunty, my mother refuses to feed me, can I come and eat at your place”. I know it was rude of me, but I do run out of patience. I still get those comments, so I m learning to just ignore them. I am 28 now, and I look 18-20. I am pretty happy actually (who wants to look old huh?) I got married last year and have put on a little weight after that, but I have to put on like 15-20 pounds more before it shows on my body.

It’s not easy being skinny. People stare at me and make comments, which are plain and simply INSULTING. I am a happy, healthy 28-year-old woman. Though, people refuse to accept the healthy part. Once when I went for a blood test, the lab technician told me “Oh, you are anemic” poor man, couldn’t look me in the eye, while handing the report. A HB count of 12.8 is anything but anemic! I have a small built, and no matter how much weight I put on, I can never be voluptuous. Period. But I have faced such insulting situations that they have left a deep scar on my psyche. My boyfriend left me when I was 16 and told everyone “she is too skinny". I cried, I scratched my body. I hated myself. It took me years to even look myself in the mirror. In college, during one of my interviews, the first thing that the professor asked was "have you heard of anorexia?” It took immense self-control to stop the urge to stand up and slap him. Instead I calmly replied, "I don’t have anorexia, can we now go on with the interview?” For years, I have faced those scornful stares. Just because I don’t fit into that idea of what a woman should look like!! No matter how much I have achieved as a career woman, or as a sister, daughter or wife, I am still branded as that skinny girl.

We all want to feel beautiful -- fat or thin, short or tall, dark, or fair. Why can’t we just let people be? Why can’t we let people be happy and beautiful from inside? I just read a forum asking if guys just liked skinny girls. Why even ask? Guys will like what they have to like. We girls have to first like ourselves. My husband, my family, my friends love me not because I am pretty, or skinny. They love me because I am a fighter, a survivor. We are much more then our face or our body. We are people with our unique individuality.

I am not someone who will win a beauty pageant; but then, I am not someone who will win a noble prize for literature either… With or without curves, I am still special…. because I am me! In love with my skinny self.