Real Women Have...

Ever hear the saying 'real women have curves'? Of course you have, because it is shoved down our throats by just about every modern media platform around. If you were to comment on somebody's weight claiming that they were 'fat' or 'overweight' it would be considerably rude, but the media seem to be constantly shunning the skinny without a hair of a thought. 

When did it become okay to rudely comment on somebody being underweight classing it as 'skeletal' like in this Daily Mail article about a GAP model? There is a facebook group with nearly 2 MILLION likes called 'Curvy girls are better than skinny girls!' Why in such an intelligently developed society, is it so essential to single out one particular body type as 'perfect', 'real' or 'better than'? Even the ever so famous Dove 'campaign for real beauty' features only curvy girls. If real women are curvy, are skinny women not real?  

Why does it not occur to so many people that a person may be naturally skinny? That it's not necessarily 'unhealthy' that they're not 'ill' or have an eating disorder. So many media platforms call out fashion houses and photographers for promoting or 'glamorizing' eating disorders when they display skinny models. Imagine if the tables were turned and a fashion house photographed a larger model for their campaigns and media shunned them for promoting obesity or overeating. It wouldn't happen. Young girls reading these articles could grow deeply ashamed of their bodies, self conscious that because they are skinny they must not be a 'real woman'. There are so so many pictures on the internet like these:

 These are offensive. It doesn't matter what your own idea of 'perfect' is, judging anybody on their body size is wrong. I love the quote by Historian and Public Speaker Hanne Blank' Real women are fat. And thin. and both, and neither and otherwise. Doesn't make them any less real'. So, 'Real women have curves'? Nope. Real women have bodies.

Abigail x