There's something I've struggled with for most of my life. I've felt guilty about being this way. I've been angry at the way I've been treated for being this way. I've been the victim of insensitivity and misconceptions because I am the way I am. I am thin.Skinny, they usually call me. As in, "Oh my God, you're so skinny you make me SICK!" That little charmer was screamed at me in the hallway in junior high by a classmate of mine. I said nothing at the time, telling myself she meant it as a compliment. But the more I thought about it, it didn't feel like a compliment. First of all, "skinny" is not a nice word. It connotes emaciated waifs and sunken eyes and jutting hipbones. Is that what she thought I looked like? WAS that what I looked like? And apparently I made this girl sick. As in physically ill. So what part of this "compliment" was supposed to be nice?
After that, I started to notice what I looked like. My knees looked like doorknobs, my ankle and wrist bones stuck out. I was hideous. I DID make people sick. I stopped wearing shorts and skirts, even in the summer, and my clothes gradually got baggier and baggier. I wanted to hide my skinny self. I didn't want anyone to notice how thin I was and say something nasty to me.
Some of you are probably thinking now that I was anorexic. I wasn't, but I've been asked that on several occasions. And no one ever asks just once. I've even been told I must do a lot of cocaine to stay so skinny. I do eat and I don't do coke. I don't do anything awful to myself to stay thin. I'm not a vegetarian, either. I don't eat tofu and bean sprouts. Is that how all skinny people are supposed to live?
The truth is, I am five foot three, 97 lbs. I eat potato chips and burgers and ice cream and whatever else I want whenever I want and I don't gain weight. And sometimes (gasp) I lose weight without trying. I have never been on a diet. I have a high metabolism. For these things I am despised.
No one hesitates to let me know how much they despise me, either. People who would never be rude to a fat person are constantly rude to me. I don't have an ass. I don't have breasts. I'll have to "fill out." I sharpen my elbows. I'm a stick. I'm a bitch. I've been told that no one thinks these things are hurtful. Well, they are. Just as hurtful as being called fat, I'll bet.
I read something recently. There was an article in a magazine recently, one of those articles about a group of "most beautiful people." The women in the group were all thin women. As I perused the readers' letters pertaining to this feature a few weeks later, I noticed that everyone was railing against the magazine for only portraying the thin woman as beautiful. I agree with those people thus far. Women are beautiful, no matter what their weight. Inevitably, these readers would follow this wonderful statement with something like, "those 'ideal' women you showed in your magazine were all sickly anorexics! REAL women don't look like that!!" Excuse me? I thought ALL women were beautiful!! I am a real woman, and I am thin. Why do we have to slam thin women to empower those who think they are overweight? It may be human nature, but it sucks. I am tired of feeling guilty for being thin. I am tired of hating myself. I am tired of hearing the crap that people (almost all women-- how's that for sisterhood?) say to me because they think thin women have it made. We don't. We're not more beautiful, sexier, happier, or any of that. We're just thinner. So lay off. And don't call me skinny.
Tracy Johnson is turning 25 this month, and she lives in North Carolina, having moved there for no real reason from her home state of Delaware in 1996. She writes for fun and to kill time during her day job, and is an actress in her spare time.
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