Read this article first for context, then come back:
First of all, if she’s considered a “plus size” model, we’ve got other problems. But we’ll take one topic at a time.
Thigh Gap. I didn’t know it was a thing—a fad until about 8 months ago. Not sure how I stumbled onto the phrase, but I found myself searching the hashtag thinspiration (which oddly enough doesn’t autocorrect). It was devastating, and it was all real people dedicating their entire Instagram feeds (and in turn, their lives) to being thinner than they currently are and having an unrealistic gap between their thighs while standing up. Apparently, shortly after my discovering it, it began to get some negative press, so Instagram banned the hashtag; but the idea lives on under countless other hashtags like: thinspo, thinspogram, thinsporational, and thinspoquotes. It’s actually disturbing. On my phone, I clicked on the thinspo hashtag and this warning popped up.
I’ve had body image and eating issues all of my life. I would label myself a compulsive eater—which includes obsessive dieting—but the majority of my issues, I kept a secret. I remember in high school measuring my stomach with my fingers and having a goal of lessening how much of my fingers my belly covered when I laid down. I never told anyone about this, but I obsessed over it. These girls are a community. This behavior is socially acceptable and praised in many circles. If you're not skinny, you're not perfect. It’s destructive, and they’re all in pain. They hate themselves. They say so on their pictures, but they all feel the same way together, so it’s ok…?
As a high school teacher for 8 years, I ran into a lot of body image issues. Sadly, many of the girls even received pressure from home about how they should look. Girls told me their parents pushed them to work out, were strict about what they ate, and they, in turn, felt bad or guilty, and were unable enjoy tasty food or “splurge” on something high in fat. There is a stigma that goes along with women eating in general and eating “bad” food specifically. (We’ll discuss that in another blog.) But it starts at home. I think a woman gets much of her relationship with food from her family life, the way she was raised, and her mother’s relationship with food.
I think about my body daily—what it looks like to me and to others. I know it is a waste of space in my brain, but this is still something I fight all day long. I don’t have a specific obsession with Thigh Gap, but I obsess over other parts of my body. All of this comes from what I’ve been fed my entire life. We’re surrounded by magazines, media, tv, movies, pornography and highly sexualized images that all say women should look a certain way—it’s deeply ingrained in us.
For now, the only way I know how to fight this is 1. not giving in myself and 2. talking about it with others. Talk about how it’s crap, and it’s doing nothing for us as a society or as a gender. It’s actually breaking people down and ruining more than our self images, it’s ruining Our Bodies—our ability to have children, to be healthy, Our Minds—self-worth, the way we treat others, Our Reputations—the fact that people stereotype women as vain and self-absorbed (true in many cases) while rewarding them for it. If we’re spending time using our brains and energy to think about our weight, the number inside the jeans we just bought, the gap between our thighs, if we can put our hand around our entire arm, if our ribs show through our skin, how far our hip bones jut out or if they show at all, what we had for lunch and then dessert and then snack, and how much of our fingers our belly covers when we lie down on our side—if we are putting energy into this or judging others for failing to meet our impossible standard, we’ve lost sight of our humanity.
We’re better than this.
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