I feel like this needs to be said in the times we live in (or maybe the times we slide back into): Being super skinny actually isn’t that fun.
Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I was that „celebrity who is clearly abusing ozempic“ level of skinny. That „the skinniest person in any room“ kind of skinny. That type of extreme skinny that gets glorified and romanticized again.
It was in my late teens and early twenties, pre-transition and even pre-coming-out as trans, so I can only speak from the „read as a woman“ perspective - but yeah, it does have social benefits there. Skinny (or underweight) isn’t just a body shape, it easily becomes an identity. If you’re the skinniest person in the room, you’re special. That’s your thing now. You do not even need to have any diagnosable eating disorder for that to happen; it’s just the way people treat you. You are The Skinny Girl and you don’t even need to be interesting or funny or cool, you already achieved something by being so fragile.
You get compliments for it. It’s the first thing people point out and they point it out either with admiration or a flattering kind of concern. I remember people praising me for being so „disciplined“, telling me they are jealous of my „willpower“, wishing they could be as „good“ around food as me - all of that just being acceptable ways to say „I can see your bones and I can infer that you’re not eating and we are taught to see this as a personal achievement“. Even the occasional „Wow, you’re so skinny, I worry you’ll break if I hug you“ or „Wow, you have probably never even touched a cheeseburger, I could never live like that“ just says that you are someone to be admired, maybe someone to be feared but in a good way.
I wasn’t any of those things. I was a mentally ill and deeply dysphoric 12-year-old who decided he would not go through puberty (and therefore not „become a woman“) if he just didn’t eat. I had always been exceptionally good at physically punishing myself - maladjusted coping mechanisms from childhood trauma we don’t need to get into here - and the punishing ordeal of denying myself food felt safe, it felt natural. More natural than whatever the heck was going on with the universe that it had put me into a body that everyone told me was a woman’s body when that felt SO wrong…. And that’s how the scared child turned into The Skinny Girl. I’m sure it would’ve horrified people to look into my mind and hear „I don’t know how to deal with this feeling of horror of my own body and the way people perceive it, but I figure starving to death would be better than growing boobs“ - but they didn’t see that. All they saw was „super skinny“. And they liked super skinny, which is a lot when you hate yourself.
So yeah, you get external validation, I will not lie about that. You get attention, you get praise and superficial, non-threatening concern, and you even get a nice little label to hide behind. The skinny influencers aren’t lying about that: in a society that wants woman to be fragile and weak, and focused on their appearance so they’re too busy to think about their actual identity beyond that, you will get advantages from being just that.
You probably expect the twist to come, you expect the „And I don’t miss any of that“ - and yes, I am chubby now and I do in fact not miss any of that! But I may not be the ideal spokesperson here as you may think „well, yeah, that’s because of the transition of it all and not really about the weight“ and I don’t want to speak over the cis girls who will obviously not relate to that part - so despite this being a lgbt blog, I’ll focus solely on the actual physical stuff from here on.
With no further ado, here’s what the skinny influencers will not tell you: some of the many, many ways being super skinny sucks.
You get sick so easily, and getting sick knocks you out so hard. Your body gets praised for looking fragile and weak, but actually being fragile and weak sucks absolute ass. No nicer way to frame it. Your body doesn’t have any energy to fight germs or any protective fat stored for emergencies, so congratulations, if you get the flu or a stomach bug, you don’t just feel a bit sick, you legit feel like you’re dying now.
Your hair falls out. Your skin is dry. Your nails are brittle. You look pale and exhausted and tired. You may even grow fur because your starving body doesn’t know how else to keep warm. You’re supposedly the weight where you’re effortlessly confident and attractive now but you’re actually constantly putting effort in to not look like the walking dead.
You get dizzy all the time. Skinny girls have more fun? No, skinny girls are sitting down because they’re dizzy.
Your period gets irregular. This may sound like a win if you have heavy or painful periods or dysphoria about periods, but it really just means you can’t ever plan around your cycle. Do you need to bring pads? Can you wear white? Who knows, you haven’t bleed in four months but it may just hit you right during that trip. Totally unpredictable now.
You’re cold. You’re always cold. Skinny girls can wear anything they want? Wrong, you’re wearing a blanket and fuzzy socks at all times now. Warm Summer evenings with friends? Everyone else is enjoying it, you’re just shivering. You can’t even snuggle up to your friend for warmth because cuddles kinda hurt now. It may even leave bruises.
Sitting hurts now. Your tailbone and hips hate sitting on hard chairs or on the floor now. Sleeping also hurts. Your knees knock together painfully, your hip bones dig into the mattress, for some reason your ribcage feels like it’ll literally shatter when you lay down. Standing? Well, you don’t have the stamina to stand for longer periods now. You’re just kinda constantly miserable.
When you’re not busy being in pain or dizzy or cold or sick, then you’re preoccupied with food. Maybe not even in a counting calories or weighing your portions way, and maybe not even in a consciously thinking about food way, but your relationship to food is just so weird now. You’re always hungry. You’re never hungry. You forget to eat until you faint. You get so ravenously hungry you’re about to kill a man. But then you try to eat something and you’re full after one bite and get nauseous at the thought of another. You feel like you can no longer stomach certain foods you perfectly tolerated before. You crave weird foods. You crave no food at all. The smell of food makes you drool. The smell of food makes you gag. Every food is weird now. Food. Food. Food.
You dread any social event with food now, because of the nausea, but also because everyone will comment on what you do. You’re not eating? People point it out. You’re eating? People point it out. People want to discuss your diet constantly. People no longer see you as anything but a walking diet. The Skinny Girl is a public spectacle.
Long story short: the appearance of fragility is rewarded socially - but the experience of fragility is honestly awful.
So, if you find yourself wishing to be the super skinny one, ask yourself: do you really long for the experience of living in a body running on empty - or is „being skinny“ just a stand-in for a deeper need?
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
titsay
dailybridgerton
2087
jacobvanloon
gummygunk
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
