Sitting in Costa Coffee one tuesday afternoon drinking a latte ( full fat, none of this skinny stuff) I found myself drifting in and out of a conversation taking place between my friends sitting beside me who were, as we women tend to do, moaning about various things.
"I'm too skinny" my first friend complained
"You are, but you should count your self lucky" replied the second brandishing a low-carb, sugar free and probably very tasteless snack in the air "I would kill to have that problem"
With that all talk of weight gain ceased and the horrors of dieting dominated the conversation.
To me, there is something inherently disturbing about this. Had my first friend been moaning that she were too fat, our natural instinct would have been to shower her in platitudes such as "you look great," "guys love curves" and "you look amazing." Yet here she was expressing a genuine concern she had with her own body and neither of us were taking her very seriously. In my mind this raised a question - why is it more socially acceptable to reproach people for being too skinny than for being too fat?
I myself have been beaten with both ends of the stick. At 18, I left school 5 foot tall weighing only 7 stone 7, but by the time two years had passed, having grown only half an inch, I was 10 stone 7. In my teenage years, people had constantly been moaning that I was too skinny, and yet in my early 20's if I one mentioned the weight I had so clearly gained, people would automatically start telling me how great I looked!
The problem is, that in a world like ours we often under appreciate the plight of the poor skinny girl. It is often assumed that since male and female models on the catwalk, many of whom have not had a deccent meal since they hit 12, are seen as the pinnacle of beauty by the fashion industry, that as a consequence any-one who is thin is beautiful.
In today's world, too much emphasis is placed upon these warped and restrained ideals of what men and women should and shouldn't look like. Nowadays thanks to our consumerist and materialistic life style, beauty is inexplicibly linked with happiness in our minds. As the models on the catwalk hurtle further and further towards size 0, the consequences have devestating pshycological effects on the way we view skinny people - beautiful and happy. This is rarely the case.
Of course those who are overweight do not suffer from this!
This attitude is then perhaps somewhat ironic. Many of the girls who suffer from low self-esteem due to their lack of weight can do very little about fixing their problem. Often those who suffer from a little excess baggage can.
Diets are very hard work, I know this from personal experience and it is true, that some girls pile on the pounds more easily than others - but ultimately there is a simple formula to losing weight. Cut the calories and increase the exercise.
More often than not, girls such as my previously referred to skinny friend ( who has tried eating like a horse, but hasn't gained a pound) have been skinny children, skinny teenagers and will most probably be skinny adults, despite having an overwhelming desire not to be - and they hate it!
As a society surely we should not be fuelling these insecurities by blurting them out in public? Surely we should not be criticising these people who are just victims of circumstance? It does not matter whether skinny or fat, telling a girl, boy, man or woman that they are "too" anything suggests you think them inadequate or even worse, abnormal.
Is this what we really believe?
(article entered for ideastap columnist competition)
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