Real Women are Sharks or Why I Don't Hate Skinny Girls

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I’ve been doing the fashion blogging thing for about a year and a half now, with occasional breaks for body politics, and I feel like there’s something I need to address. Even though I don't have a ton of blog followers.

I’m plus-sized. I am a big, curvy girl with big boobs, broad hips, and a little waist. And as a result I’ve heard a whole lot of things from people who were trying to be helpful and body positive:

“Real women have curves.”

“I don’t want to date a little boy. I want to date a real woman.”

“Real women.” To all the people who use “real women” to describe your ideal mate, to describe me, or to describe any other human being on the planet:

You’re. Not. Helping.

I know these remarks come from a place that attempts to be positive. But, really, they’re not. What these remarks tell us is that we are allowed to be beautiful because someone else is not. They tell us that we are meant to be in competition with other people, other women, in a world that already tells us to compete every day of our lives.

What you’re saying when you use those words is that you, random passerby, are allowed to define what an entire gender should or should not be based on your own preferences.

This really does go back to competition. Society says we're supposed to be in constant competition with everyone else and to use our differences to compete. I refuse to compete with somebody else simply because they have a different body type.

I have girl friends who are tall, slender, and buy their pants from the men's clothing section. I have girl friends who are very large. I have girl friends who are muscular. I have girl friends who are barely five feet tall. I have girl friends who are pushing six feet. I have girl friends who have large chests. I have girl friends who were born with male genitalia.

We are all women. Real women.

I'm not going to tell you that I want to bake a cake made of rainbows so everyone can eat it and be happy. I recognize that it isn't going to happen. But, if you have a prejudice against certain body types, I want you to think about why. This isn't "you" as in "the eight or so people who follow this blog," but "you" as in "I am looking outward at the world, at anybody who might read these words."

I leave you with a comic from JoScribbles. Because real women are sharks.