Today’s personal pet peeve is the phrase “Real women have curves.” Well, guess what? Real women also don’t have curves, and I am yet again becoming annoyed by people fighting the stick-thin fashion model world by insisting that real women should be curvy. Yes, for women who are genetically designed to be curvy, it’s a good thing. For women like myself who were not genetically designed to be curvy, being told that “real women have curves” becomes annoying. I am, after all, a real woman even though I am somewhat lacking in curves.
I grew up before the super stick-thin model was held up as a symbol of ultimate beauty. Women were expected to have curves and hour glass figures. I was constantly informed of this, told to eat more, and basically made to feel like I didn’t fit in with society’s standard of beauty because I was built like Twiggy and not Sophia Loren. No amount of eating was ever going to change that (or ever did, and let me tell you I did try for a very long time). All that pressure to be something I wasn’t ever going to be gave me something of a poor self-image. I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to be more like Marilyn Monroe or Sophia Loren when I was a young girl. I wanted to have hips and cleavage and a tiny waist, because that’s what everyone seemed to believe was beautiful, while I was just cute. Well, I couldn’t make my body do something it wasn’t going to do.
Now thin is supposedly in, and I’m still getting grief about being thin. If it isn’t someone telling me to put some meat on my bones or assuming I starve myself to remain thin, it’s someone telling me that “real women have curves.” There are even people who have suggested to me that I shouldn’t be happy that a great portion of American society finds my particular body type attractive, because it’s unhealthy for young girls and women. I’m right with them that no one should be told they have to be skinny to be attractive, but going to the other extreme isn’t healthy either. Naturally skinny women haven’t stopped being born.
That’s about as much time as I have to rant about this, being in the middle of doing laundry and making dinner (and watching curling), but in closing I have one more thing to say. Please stop assuming that just because thin is in in the modeling world that a thin person has any sort of easy time finding clothing that fits them. Sure, they like to showcase the clothing on the runway and in ads on thin women, but by the time it gets to the retail floor, the fashion industry could care less about thin women … unless they can afford to go to designer boutiques or buy couture. There is far more nice clothing out there for women larger than myself than there is for women of my size, which is why I have been stuck wearing clothing meant for teenagers my entire adult life. So don’t think thin women are getting any special love from the fashion industry. We just make convenient coat hangers for their fashion shows. We certainly aren’t being catered to in any way.
And now … back to my meatloaf, baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, curling, and the piles and piles of laundry.