I am all for body positivity and loving the skin that you’re in and yet I am still on a diet and working out. Must mean I secretly hate my body right? WRONG. I have bad days with my body image and so does everyone, no one can love every little thing about themselves all the time, let’s be realistic, but most of the time I’m actually okay with my curves.
Sure, I loved the days when I could fit in a size 8/10 but I’m going to be honest… my tummy wasn’t even flat back then but I was in better health. I’m not saying that a person with extra weight is unhealthy because many people have a few extra pounds and have no problems at all. I personally have problems because of my weight and no… it’s nothing to do with my heart or blood pressure I can assure you my heart is perfectly fine.
My issue is that I am battling infertility and I need to loose weight to control my symptoms of PCOS and eventually be able to try for a baby when I am ready. I also have hyperglycemia so I am fighting against diabetes which is heriditarywith women in my family.
All of this stuff is to do with how my body works, not my appearance. To be honest, if I was perfectly capable of ovulating without losing weight I’d stay my chubby self forever because I am not a fan of diets or workouts or avoiding sweets (I used to be a bit of a chocoholic).
I just want people to see that dieting isn’t always about hating the way you look, sometimes someone has an internal battle with a part of themselves that you can’t see. Don’t just assume someone hates their appearance because they have started eating better.
On a side note – The people who think plus size models are promoting an unhealthy life and not self-love, you are wrong (at least about most of them)! They aren’t telling people they need to be like them, they are telling people to learn to love themselves even if you have a few extra pounds. Also, you tend to be the kind of people who are okay with severely underweight women walking the runway – you can be slim and unhealthy too!
I lack confidence in many things and part of me honestly believes that my anxiety will come and take away everything I love eventually. Once upon a time, I loved drama and performing arts but now if I even think about acting or dancing, my stomach feels like it rolls over. Not good.
My body is something that I have always struggled to accept but not consistently. Some days I’ll wake up with an attitude like “wow, so curvy today. Looking fine. Kylie Jenner can eat her heart out because you didn’t need to pay thousands for full lips like those.” Then I have my bad days, where I just look in the mirror and wonder why a fat mess like me is even allowed to leave the house. It is as if my body confidence issues have mood swings of their own.
People rarely see that side of me though. I only choose to let people know about my insecure days when they are so bad that I just lie in bed making myself cry. If I’m around people, I tend to make a lot of fat jokes about myself as if I think I’m beating them to it. Being told that I would struggle to lose weight because of my PCOS only seemed to make it worse as on the days where I feel less confident I feel like there’s no way of making myself feel better.
That being said… I’m currently a UK size 14 clothing and once, I was a size 8 but even back then I had a tummy. I still thought I was fat. Ridiculous, right? The thing is, if you are truly unhappy with your body image, it actually isn’t your body that’s the problem. It’s your mind. You can’t fix your body to fix your mind, that’s not how it works. If I was as unhappy with a size 8 as I am at size 14 then I won’t be happy no matter what I do. It’s sort of like being in the mind of someone who suffers from anorexia, without you actually starving yourself. You see flaws that aren’t there.
But like I said… I have good days. Some days I can wear a tight dress and walk out of the house feeling like a queen. Recently, I purchased a tiny black cropped top to wear on a girls night out. I’m the biggest girl in my group… oops! I saw it in New Look and I fell in love. I just had to buy it.
Despite my body issues, I’ve never actually been one to buy into that whole “dress for your size” lark. I’ll wear whatever I like to, whether it’s cropped or not. Even on my insecure days.
So, when the day came to actually wearing the cropped top, it did happen to be on one of my bad days. I was crying in bed over my weight at 2 pm but I was out slaying a cropped top and leggings by 9 pm. Talk about mood swings?
I did get a lot of mixed reactions with some people remarking about “what kind of plus-size clothing store sells cropped tops to us bigger girls” but I did get a lot of compliments which made me feel much better about my decision. A few girls said that I had a “great, curvy woman’s figure” and someone even said they admired my confidence at being able to show the top of my tummy. Some girls (more than guys, surprisingly) complimented my breasts, I do rock the cleavage when I feel like it.
I have let my anxiety and self-image take far too much away from me, my dress sense won’t be one of them. I rocked that cropped top just as much as a rock baggy tees and sweat pants. Society needs to learn to deal with that.
See, being that chubby girl in a cropped top isn’t such a bad thing, even if all your friends have tiny waists.
Be the curve queen of your group!
