Body image

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Today I'm going to write about a very personal issue.

Since I was 8 years old, I have been told I'm too fat and should lose weight. I have heard this, not only from bullies, but adults too. When I was 8, the school nurse started telling me that I'm overweight. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I think that's messed up. No 8-year-old should be worrying about losing weight. When you're 8 you are still growing. I didn't stop growing until I was 14 or 15.

I grew up insecure about my body and my weight because adults and my classmates kept reminding me that I was not skinny. 

Well, by the time I was 15, I had grown taller and lost a lot of weight. Now people started telling me how I had become "so beautiful." The people telling me this were grown-ups. They were the parents of my friends', my relatives and the friends of my parents'. The thing is that I had not gotten more beautiful. I looked the same but I was taller and skinnier. 

I was not skinny but I was skinnIER. Apparently that was enough to make me beautiful. 

Telling a teenager who has lost weight how they've gotten beautiful is the same as telling them that skinny equals beautiful. 

"Does this mean losing more weight will make me even more beautiful?"

Such an efficient way to promote eating disorders, don't you think?

Unfortunately, that's just how the society works. "Skinny=Beautiful."

Now, I weigh less than I did when I was 11 and am about 5 centimeters taller. I have got to be honest, my insecurities have followed me to this day. I am not confident in my own skin. 

Our society's beauty standards did that to me. Ever since I was 8 years old, it's been made very clear to me that I cannot be beautiful if I am not skinny. 

And I'm not the only one.

If you have ever felt fat, ugly, insecure or just not good enough, I just want you to know, even though it may sound like such a cliche, that you are beautiful. Wasting your youth worrying about what your body looks like is not worth it.

Believe me, I know.


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