All Women are QUEENS!!

Dear beloved readers,

Because society is so bent on this ideal body image, we need to stop comparing ourselves and others to those who are more skinny. First of all, that is damaging to women and men alike. When they, having been told to look a certain way, diet, exercise, get on weight loss medications, chances are they have been told that through the advertisements, tv, the radio, and magazines since the age of four or five. Society in the Western Hemisphere has been pushing this certain weight, hight, skin type, hair type, eye color, and other things that promote toxic beauty standards. Chances are that young girls and women, and also boys and men, already feel insecure.

We have been praised for the way we look if we are tall, skinny, curvey, a size 2 to 4, and have a certain tan or hair color and are a 97 to 100 pounds. We are also praised for not having body or pubic hair and for having no acne amd for having a chest which is a C cup, 32- inch bust, a 26- inch waist, and a 32- inch butt. We are praised if we are skinny, damned if we are plus- sized.

For a while, we have been pushing not only the ideal body types in girls, which are basically based on children with no body or leg hair. We also base our "preference" for girls and women to look like Barbie dolls and young children at the same time. Young children have no pubic hair, leg hair, or armpit hair. Barbies have the "perfect" height, weight, bust, waistline, and bottom. And then, we also expect women to look like anime school girls, with big grown woman breasts, a C cup, and skinny arms and legs. It is almost as if we expect women to look like young, grown, childlike, sexy, and somehow hairless school- age children who are also grown adults but still children. Here is a visual representation:

As of late, we have been advocating for a "body positivity" movement, which actually does more harm than good. Allow me to explain why this is very harmful and toxic. We will accept a plus- sized woman who has her junk and her rolls in the "right" places, with her hips and shoulders lining up and her breasts and thighs being more "proportionate", calling her a goddess, which she is.

This is what an "ideal" plus sized woman, according to society's attempts at body positivity, looks like. I am not going to lie; she is stunning and gorgeous! I Googled, "sexy plus sized woman" and this is one of the images I found. Of course, she is very attractive and beautiful. And society is alright with her being a bigger size, as long as she looks like this.

Society praises plus size women, only if their bodies are "well proportioned" with an equal breast- hip- thigh ratio and an equal shoulder- hip ratio and nice arms and legs. But society scoffs when she is overweight and her BMI is over the healthy amount and has an uneven weight distribution and looks like the next woman I am about to show you:

The image above is a cartoon clipart of a woman with an uneven weight distribution, where her chest is bigger than her hips and then her legs are still skinny. She also happens to have big shoulders and her bra size is probably a C or D, respectively. Society deems her body type as "ugly" or "unattractive". Some people are so negative towards the girls and women who look more like this and judge them because of the uneven weight distribution. This tears women and girls down.

Judgement and accusations about their health are constantly thrown at them and others say harsh things about them behind their back and even take pictures of them without their knowledge or consent. They already feel terrible about their weight and know they need help.

But some plus size women have always been trying to build up their confidence, no matter what they look like or how their weight is distributed. No matter how tall or short they are, big or small they are, a lot of women try to be proud of themselves and show gratitude toward what they have already accomplished. They try to be proud of all the hard work they have done.

Mothers and daughters should build each other up and other women. When a mother uplifts her daughter and other women, she encourages self- confidence and gratitude. When she uplifts other women about their appearance, she encourages her daughter to do the same. When a mother models body acceptance, she encourages her daughter to accept her own body and to feel loved and it encourages her to love herself. Self- love comes from the love and acceptance of others; she cannot learn to love herself if she is not shown the love from her parents and peers. If your daughter is being bullied for her weight or appearance at school, (ie. a teacher calling her names related to her weight or a disease such as diabetes), then you have to tell her to stand up for herself and tell the student or teacher who is making those remarks, "This is my body and I am proud of it and my hard work to make it better. I accept myself the way I am. I am strong, happy, and confident." A girl should grow up feeling confident and proud. Body shaming another woman or girl to make her feel better about herself is only encouraging her to try harder to lose weight and work out more. It also makes her feel like she has to stay a certain weight and work on other parts of her body in order to make sure that you or anyone else do not make fun of her.

Why are women wearing yoga pants and a sports bra or a tank top while taking a walk at the park? Don't they wear such clothing when they go to the gym? Don't you wear proper gym clothes when you work out? Is it not 100+ degrees outside in the summer, respectively? Why are we making fun of women who look a certain way and then saying, "she has no business wearing that! She is so unevenly proportioned"?

The solution is not to judge a woman or a girl based on her weight or her size of clothing; the solution is to mind our own business and work on improving ourselves.

Here is why I think body positivity is not always helpful. Hear me out. When we say our own bodies are beautiful and that "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", we are telling ourselves that our feelings of insecurity are invalid. Yes, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and we should accept our bodies the way they are. But we also need to validate our feelings and accept our insecurities and not just our bodies. If you do not like your stomach, for example, that is fine. But please do not tell your daughter that another woman is fat.

No matter our weight, hight, calorie intake, or what we look like, because of fatphobia, we hate what we look like on a consistent basis. If a skinny girl packs on a few pounds, suddenly she is getting comments like, "I see your double chin.", or, "What's with your double chin?" The mean comments go away once she loses that weight. The plus size women are constantly bombarded with hateful comments about their weight, something that is so hard to control for many women.

We constantly count calories, work out, diet, get on the treadmill, lift weights, and look at our bodies in the mirror every single day and HATE everything we see. "I have too much fat in the middle and too much cellulite in my thighs!"

Everyone feels insecure about their weight and some may even make jokes about their own weight, like, "I ready the shampoo bottle and it said, 'Adds body and volume'. I guess that's why I gained more weight, so I have to stop using it." That is a joke that one of my friends made on Facebook. Another joke about weight that I have personally made because I am skinny is, "Yeah. The space is really small, but I can still fit. That's because I can squeeze in like a little rat." I make skinny jokes about myself as a skinny girl.

Am I proud of being skinny? Not really. Yes, skinny girls can still feel insecure. As much as we should validate the struggles that bigger and more plus size women and girls face, we should still validate the feelings and insecurities that skinny girls and women have. You see, we have insecurities about our mid section, our arms, or our legs, for example.

So instead of telling plus size women, "Wow! You're so beautiful. I love your confidence!" or, "You do not need to feel insecure; you're beautiful!" to skinny women. "You are beautiful!" is all we need to say to either. That is enough; we do not need to tell them they do not have to be insecure or that we admire their confidence. Instead, we just have to complement each other about anything we like.

"I like your makeup, hair, outfit, eyes, etc..." will leave a woman or a girl feeling better and may make her whole day or week. Body acceptance and body neutrality means accepting all body types and the people's own opinions about what they look like to themselves. Body acceptance and neutrality also means accepting what you look like without saying it is beautiful or not and just saying, "It is what it is." If you feel beautiful on some days but you feel ugly on other days, there is nothing wrong with you; these are just feelings. If you feel that you need to work on your stomach and make it more flat, go for it! If you like it the way it is, that is also fine. If you feel like you need to make your arms stronger, that is your decision. If not, that is also fine. If you feel like you should change your eating and workout routine to better yourself, that is ay-okay. If you do not want to change anything, that is also your choice.

As a daughter, I would prefer not to be compared to other women, telling me that other women are heavier than me or that I am lucky to be skinny and lucky to be a normal weight. This actually makes me feel more self- conscious, because I feel like I need to maintain a certain weight or just try harder to keep losing weight. Many girls and women struggle with an eating disorder, either where they eat compulsively or try to starve themselves. Some try binging and purging, while others try starving and restricting themselves.

When I was 13 and 14, I tried to restrict my calories, what kinds of foods I ate, how much I ate, and how much meat and vegetables I consumed. I ate a lot of salads regularly and made a lot of smoothies for breakfast. I did not eat a lot of meat and also did not eat pizza with any meat on it. I also did not eat cake, brownies, or anything sweet that I really wanted. I only weighed 97 to 99 pounds, back then. When I was dating my first boyfriend at the age of 19, I started restricting myself again to only foods that had a lot of protein and almost no carbohydrates. I felt like I needed to stick to a certain diet with a lot of chicken and eggs and more white meat and less red meat. I also felt like I had to avoid bread and pasta. I also felt guilty for bringing a pasta dish to a potluck, once, before we started dating. I also felt guilty for making cake for a party, because one of my friends always said, "I can't eat that. It has sugar and I cannot have any sugar because I like to run marathons." At first, I thought this was all very harmless, because some people just like to have very good habits and sugar is something that causes weight gain. I thought it was normal for some people to avoid sugar and even tell whoever brought the desert to the party or potluck that they can't eat it.

But this kind of behavior stems from fatphobia, the fear of becoming fat, the fear of looking like "those" people. It really comes from a place of entitlement and resentment, because they are not like "those" people.

We also need to be aware of what we say and how it comes across. We have to encourage our daughters and young 14 and 15 year old girls to wear what makes them feel comfortable in public.

Because society wants young girls and women to feel insecure about their bodies, it is so important that we not take pictures of other women who look a certain way or talk about how "fat" we are, thinking that it makes our daughters or our friends feel better. Pointing out how "unappealing" another woman looks, thinking that it will make me feel better about myself does not help. It makes you seem judgemental and says nothing about my body in a positive way; it just says more about you and what you think.

Instead, just give me positive affirmations every week. As a society, we have to do better at lifting young girls and women up. We have to encourage woman and girls to be confident in themselves and say things about their bodies in a positive way about them. That makes us feel better.

I hope you all walk away with this important message. Remember that all bodies are different. We are all built differently. If I were a man, I would date a woman based on her personality, not her looks. We have to remember that all women are QUEENS!