Example from thesaurus.com:
| Main Entry: | fat |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | overweight |
| Synonyms: | beefy, big, blimp, bovine, brawny, broad, bulging, bulky, bull, burly, butterball, chunky, corpulent, distended, dumpy, elephantine, fleshy, gargantuan, gross, heavy, heavyset, hefty, husky, inflated, jelly-belly, lard, large, meaty, obese, oversize, paunchy, plump, plumpish, ponderous, porcine, portly, potbellied, pudgy, roly-poly, rotund, solid, stout, swollen, thickset, weighty, whalelike |
Whoa. Look at those words! Blimp? Dumpy? Whalelike? Whalelike?! Now see the difference when I type in full-figured:
| Main Entry: | buxom |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | bosomy |
| Synonyms: | ample, built, busty, chubby, comely, curvaceous, curvy, full-bosomed, full-figured, healthy, hearty, lusty, plump, robust, shapely, stacked, voluptuous, well-made, well-proportioned, well-rounded, zaftig |
Well...that's better. Sort of. See, the problem arises when we hear and read these words and they sound really nice. Cuvaceous, healthy, volumptuous...nice words that leave us with images of Marilyn Monroe and Jessica Rabbit instead of thoughts of crying in dressing rooms and de-tagging photos of ourselves on facebook. If someone made up that nice phrase and made it mean all of those sexy things...why do we still not feel like it applies to us when, clearly, we're the people it was made for?
Okay, I don't know why I'm saying "we" and "us." I'm talking about me. Just me. That's the point of blogging right? To talk about yourself and your thoughts and what you're doing? Actually, I'm writing this in hopes that it won't end up just being about me. I'm hoping that you'll read this and you'll comment and follow this blog because some of this sounds like you too. And then we will be a we. And I can talk about what "we're" doing and how "we're" feeling...and maybe that will help. Maybe that's why I'm doing this. I don't know.
Here's what I do know:
1.) I've never been thin, slender, or skinny. I've never even been the right weight for my height. Not even at the top of the bracket.
2.) I don't know what it's like to look at a picture of myself and not immediately find something to hate.
3.) I can't understand why anyone would find me attractive.
4.) All of these things scare me more than anything else in my life.
After talking with one of my best friends last night and finally saying these things out loud, she suggested I start a blog...because this, she said, was definitely something she'd read about. I hope she's right and there are other people out there who need something like this to read so they won't feel like they're the only ones who feel like that. And I'm hoping that if I write about this enough, at some point I'll get to the bottom of all of this negativity and find out what it's like to love the girl on the outside as much as I love the girl on the inside.
I just realized I'm going to end up crying through a whole bunch of this. So there's that.
My other hope and wish is that, if you do read this, you won't see it as a ploy for attention or as me fishing for compliments. I hope that you'll see this as the crie de coeur that it is.
And that, I suppose, is how we're going to begin this journey...
