I’m Sad That Everybody Wants to be Skinny

“Have you lost weight?”

How many of us are thrilled when somebody asks us that question? Hands up if it gives you a buzz, catapults you into a better mood? The question is usually followed with something like, “You look amazing.” No wonder you move along with a spring in your step. You’re instantly lighter, even if you haven’t lost a single pound.

I’m just gonna say what we’re all thinking. Thin wins.

And I am so sad about this.

I honestly thought we’d moved on. Convinced myself that we are all beautiful because we are all dif-ferent shapes and sizes, no body is the same. How incredible to be amongst billions of complete indi-viduals. No clones. Just authenticity and a celebration of being alive. It took me almost 40 years to start believing this, though. I’d experienced a lifetime of body shaming, whether that came from others or from myself. But when a close friend went through a difficult time and lost weight in the process, it made her angry when people would make comments and refer to dropping kilos as the silver lining, says things like, “Well, at least you look amazing!” I started to notice how she reframed compliment-ing others, eliminating weight and replacing it with something less targeted, and decided to do the same.

Then, a new craze hit our socials…

The Body Positivity Movement.

Step by step, I began to follow this movement with joy. I found influencers such as Alex Light a re-freshing inspiration with carefully researched content and a strong, uplifting message. Women were being encouraged to take up space. To grow instead of shrink. To love our curves. Wear the bikini! Show your midriff! Throw away the scales! Health professionals were even calling out BMI as old-fashioned, criticising it for being an inaccurate tool. Finally! You didn’t have to be thin to win. Gone were the days of applauding those for being underweight with growing concerns for the messages it sent out to young girls and vulnerable women. Being mindful about underlying health conditions and eating or anxiety disorders was shared with strong advice, normalising how a person’s body is not another person’s business.

At first, I was a cynic. I didn’t buy into it straight away, thanks to decades of being brainwashed. I’d bought the magazines with my pocket money, the ones targeted at young teens that just so happened to litter the front cover with the weight of female pop stars. Before reading the first page, you knew who was seven, eight or nine stone… eight being the celebrated weight, with gossip-fuelled worry if the celeb slipped down to seven or - God forbid - crept up to nine. Being “fat” was frowned upon or ridiculed; always funny in the movies, right? The fat kid was bullied at school, but somehow discov-ered comic relief in the toxicity, reinventing themselves as a loveable clown… although one you pitied rather than aspired to be.

I trained professionally as an actor and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that much joy was removed from those three years at drama school worrying about my weight; I was frightened I wouldn’t work in the industry unless I lost more… or gained more. But, come on. Surely it was better to be successful and skinny? I could wear a fat suit for comedy (thank you, Monica Gellar). Even before I hit my teens, as a kid in a leotard and tights in ballet, I would compare myself in the mirror to the other girls in my class, wondering why some were skinny and I had a little podgy belly. And I was never “fat”. I was a healthy, active child, participating in competitive dance most weekends. I wasn’t allowed an ice cream from the van that parked outside school every single day unless it was a special occasion. Plenty of “skinny” kids ate ice cream every day, I’d think.

Now, I am the mother of a daughter. In recent years, I’ve felt relief that the world has been changing its views on body image. But earlier last year, the annual report for The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) informed us that the era of the “ballet body” was upon us. It’s not inspiring since ballet is notorious for eating disorders. Those who cannot afford procedures such as liposuction may turn to starving themselves for the on-trend bod. Steven Williams, president of the ASPS even told the Washington Post, “There really has been almost a decade of ‘more curves are better’, and really glorifying those. And now it seems like we’re taking a bit of an abrupt turn…”

Almost a decade. Gosh. Is that all we get?

And why? Why does the trend have to be so focused on our bodies and specifically, women’s bod-ies? We cannot decide what our genetics are, who and where we came from, what our bone structure is or what our height will be. We don’t decide on what length our legs are or how thick our hair will grow. Every single one of us is unique, made from two other unique individuals. This drive to be the same, to replicate the few - the FEW - who model clothes, has been a constant for my entire life. It started long before I was born, having been brought up by women measuring their worth on the will-power of eating lettuce and boiled eggs but punished themselves for eating a chocolate biscuit. Those women are not to blame either.

It’s no secret that weight-loss jabs have escalated the new trend to be skinny. Now that they are so readily available, its created a fix for being “fat” which means being overweight will once again be labelled as lazy. Of course, if a person is living with obesity and their weight is damaging to their health, this needs to be addressed. But for those who struggle to conform to the perfect body trend, is it creating an unnecessary problem? I know quite a few people now who have turned to weight-loss jabs to either loose a few kilos or to “stay skinny” as one person put it. Another has admitted to be afraid of putting on weight when they inevitably stop using them. What happens afterwards is still very much a grey area.

It’s sad that being skinny seems to have trumped all shapes and sizes. The Body Positivity Movement has been widely criticised as “insincere”, trying to push people to love their own body and selling products off the back of this. Whilst this movement hasn’t disappeared, there is much cynicism sur-rounding it. Female protagonists in movies and TV series are still stick thin, rarely a curve in sight. Clothes continue to be designed to fall off slender bodies. Finding fashionable pieces for big-busted women is still a challenge, with most garments for bigger sizes, not just those with a bigger bust. I was keen to quiet the chatter in my mind that I should be thin to win, but the new trends are screaming loud in my head. I cannot open Instagram without being sold pills, jabs and lifestyles that will make me happier, ie THINNER. Apparently.

I read a heartbreaking story the other day about a woman who had recently lost her mother. Faced with the difficult task of sorting her mother’s house, she found drawers and cupboards filled with weight-loss products, diet books, diet pills and more. A mountain of things to just throw away was revealed, all related to how hard her mother had constantly tried to be slimmer. She had been beautiful, in every way, but striving for weight-loss haunted her while she was alive. And now, she was gone.

It’s hard to know how to navigate this with my own daughter. Trends change so often, as we have witnessed. Can I hope for body positivity to come back around again? Or will I have to support her as she struggles with others past and present, in this endless journey to be thin?

Surely we can do better?