I donât think Iâm the only girl out there who struggles to maintain a healthy weight. But it seems that whenever I talk about it, Iâm met with stares of disbelie
âWhy do you have to worry about your weight?â I get asked when I dare to mention that I feel self-conscious about it. Their surprise comes from the stigma that the term âstruggle with your weightâ tends to be associated with battling obesity. But in my case, I strive to put on the pounds rather than drop them, in an effort to avoid hitting the underweight mark. It never fails to shock me, though, how others respond to my issue.
Most often, others are underwhelmed. âEat a pizza,â is the most common piece of advice I hear. As if my weight problemâor any weight problemâwere really that easy to fix. These same people, who clearly arenât well practiced dieticians, never offer similar advice to others who want to lose weight. No one would consider telling them, âJust eat a salad,â because it is, with good reason, considered rude. But for whatever reason, critiquing my eating habits is seen as perfectly fine.
The reason that many shrug off my underweight woes is that they donât see them as an issue. They look at me and are floored by how I can complain about being thin, when our society tries to make us believe that skinny is the goal. Or worse, they get suspicious, like they think Iâm purposefully drawing attention to it in some sort of weird, âLook at me, Iâm so thin!â way. I canât even tell you how much this isnât the case.
 To be borderline underweight is frightening. For all those out there who donât see this, Iâll just assume itâs because you werenât with me at my last checkup. My doctor took one look at the scale and threatened medical intervention if I couldnât gain something in the next three weeks. Or maybe because you werenât standing beside me when I bumped into that childhood friend who immediately burst into hysterics over how bad I looked.
 Even when someone does take the situation seriously, it is usually for the wrong reason. They think that my problem is not the threat of thinness itself, but how I got there. And the first conclusion that they tend to jump to is an eating disorder.
 In retrospect, I guess I canât fault them for watching out for me. That doesnât mean, though, that I donât feel like Iâve been punched in the gut whenever someone asks, âYouâreâŠeating, right?â
âYes,â I always assure them, and even though itâs true, there are plenty of people who donât believe me. And the second someone becomes convinced of this eating disorder that I donât have, they take it upon themselves to police my eating habits. Iâm no longer allowed to get full during a meal, because to leave my plate anything short of polished earns me remarks like, âThatâs all youâre going to eat?â
I get criticized for turning anything away. Never mind that I genuinely donât like donuts, my friends always call me out for avoiding them. âYouâre already thin,â they say, âOne donut isnât going to kill you.â Apparently, my preferences donât matter so much as the fact that I can eat the donut, and therefore, I should.
So, when it comes down to it, why write all this? Is it to complain about issues that Iâve encountered as a naturally slender person? Not completely. The goal is to do more than to discuss my personal experiences. Thin girls everywhere may very well be just as self-conscious about their body as a girl of any other figure. But many donât see commenting on these girls as a taboo. In fact, sometimes they even point it out because they see it as a compliment. Theyâll exclaim, âYouâre so thin!â like it has the same value as, âYou have beautiful eyes!â (It doesnât.)
The way I see it, a body is a body, and whether ours is curvy or boney, it should not be allowed to affect how weâre treated. The body we are born into is our own business. It only sets us all up for failure when we can’t let go of this belief that weâre allowed to talk openly about someoneâs thinness. Doing so keeps this idea alive that some types of body get to be celebrated, while commenting on others is strictly taboo. It causes girls of different body types to compare themselves to one another, when this shouldnât be the case at all. We keep preaching body equality, but I think in order to make that a possibility, we have to realize that something as simple as an off-hand comment about someoneâs weight may carry a lot more meaning than we think.