A post about body image...

Like every other girl in the world, I have body image issues.

I'm not overweight. I have been in the past, but at present I'm supposedly a healthy weight for my height - about 5'2" and 135 pounds. My measurements, on a good day, are 35.5-27-38. That's pretty normal. I've had a couple jobs where I spent 40 hours a week (or more) going through people's measurements, and if I came across my own, I'd think I had an okay figure.

...but when I actually look at myself in the mirror, or go shopping for clothes, I make myself miserable. I hate my hips, I hate my ass, I hate my breasts. I feel fat, like I'll never be attractive. I hate my fat, jiggly arms. I hate that sometimes the only jeans that fit are a size 11, even though I know that women's sizes are completely arbitrary numbers and sometimes the jeans that fit are a size 6. And beauty standards change at random and are also arbitrary and have very little to do with what people actually find attractive, anyway.

The really crazy thing is that knowing all of that just doesn't help that much. And even crazier is that I'm not even especially attracted to the super-skinny girls that we're being sold as the current beauty standard. I think curvy girls are hot, I like hips and breasts and if I see one more picture of a size 0 model in a corset that's just sort of vaguely encircling her waist instead of cinching it in (because there's so little there to cinch), I'm gonna scream. And actually, more than anything else I'm attracted to people's personalities, so this whole conversation is really moot.

I think the thing that makes it hard for me is clothes. Pants suck, I hate buying pants. Every pair of pants in the world makes my hips and butt look huge, except for this one pair of cotton capris I own. When I iron those so they have a sharp crease and wear them with heels, I look (or maybe mostly feel) like a 1950s movie star. And I know how to shop for the things that flatter my body type, that are supposed to cover my flaws...but especially here in New York, I find myself insanely jealous of these rail-thin girls who can wear absolutely anything. Skinny jeans, bubble skirts, any garment made out of latex. I see them and I want to look like that. It's hard to tell yourself that you're perfect just the way you are when you pass an actual model on the street while fabric shopping.

Even if I work out every single day, even if I starve myself, even if I had a perfectly flat stomach and skinny arms, my hips and butt aren't going anywhere. Those hips are part of my bone structure, and I'm never going to be a size zero. My freshman year og high school, I weighed 115 pounds, I looked like a crack addict, and I still had wide hips and a big ass. I know this, and I know I should not let it get to me, but somehow it feels like a personal failing.

One of my goals this year is to get the fuck over this nonsense. I want to learn to love my body, as ridiculous as that sounds. I want to stop wishing for a "bikini body" and instead celebrate how awesome it is that 1950s dresses fit like they're made for me. And I'm going to wear my goddamn skinny jeans, regardless of whether or not girls with 38" hips are "supposed" to wear them. I spent so many years trying to lose weight, made myself crazy with impossible diets, and now I give up! I'm going to learn to love myself the way I am, and say "fuck you" to anyone who says the way I am isn't good enough.