It's not quite as simple as that: Weight

Foreword: I'm writing this as an unconventional but otherwise average white cis-gendered female of a slightly too high BMI.
Please, don't kill me.


There are two sides to every argument, and therefore nothing is ever quite as simple as that. Take weight for example.

One camp says skinny is beautiful, we're talking Kenneth Tong's questionable "hoax", catwalk models, topshop* thinspiration sites. These say you are not beautiful or worthwhile if you aren't the size of a twig.

Another is anti this, they say curves are beautiful, that girls should have hips and breasts and actual stomachs.

A third says we should be happy just the way we are, fat or thin, male or female, hairy or smooth.

Don't even get me started on "real women" or "real men". We're all fucking different, some women have broad child bearing hips and some naturally are slim and have the figure of a teenage boy. Some men are big and muscly and some are small and delicate. It shouldn't need re-iterating anymore.

But the problem is it's never quite all that simple is it? Strictly we should all be in camp three. Love yourself the way you are. Yes, this is true, you should, but it's not as simple as that. At the end of the day it's about your health, you should be happy without the way you are, you shouldn't feel the need to diet to be accepted, but you also shouldn't endanger your health.

And also, what if it makes you happy? What if you choose to loose a stone by a sensible means, eat healthily, exercise well, drop that extra dress size. Should you not be congratulated for making a life choice? What if you don't want to? What if you're comfortable in your own skin? That's a life choice too, although it seems to be more acceptable.

The only real place you should be drawing the line is where it's bad for you, anorexia is bad, bulimia is bad, consciously deciding to make a change to your lifestyle in a safe manner is not. It's your choice anyway.

There is no definitive answer on this, as to whether we should be championing larger people or slimmer people, "normal people" and what is normal anyway? Really we should just show that actually there's a massive cross section of people in the world, and some are fat and some are thin and some have love handles or muscled arms or lumps or scars.

I've noticed this at uni, although we vary a bit in size, none of us are massively over weight. We're some of us perhaps pushing it on the BMI (and what bollocks that is) but we're what you might call "average" and some of them are really very cruel. I've heard people dismissed on weight alone, which is mental because I have friends outside uni who would clinically be considered to be overweight who are just as wonderful, beautiful, lovely, intelligent worthwhile people as any of those I have who aren't.

I'm equally as incredulous as the next person about people who eat so much they become bed bound, we watched a programme about a man who weight 56 stone recently, I couldn't relate to that. But I can relate to carrying a few extra pounds around the middle and not caring. The fact i've dropped a dress size whilst at uni is nice, but weighing myself proves I haven't lost a pound of weight so it's all bollocks anyway.

It annoys me when people champion one thing at the expense of another. Be happy with yourself, but don't risk your health. Do what you personally feel you need to do and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. You want to loose some weight in a safe manner? Go for it! You don't want to? That's equally as ok, you are a grown adult and capable of making your own life choices. So go for it! Have that extra slice of cake and then go for a run in the morning, or don't, have a cup of tea and a lie in instead.

I don't have a definitive answer here. I just wanted to say that you can have your fatspo and your thinspo and what have you. But it's not quite as simple as that.



*I am not commenting on topshops ethic, merely that they, like many companies, advertise with slim tall models. Unlike other companies however, they seem to stock a profusion of small sizes, leaving tall sturdy people like me, stuck if ever we find ourselves there. I don't notice it half so much anywhere else.