literature

Bye, Bye Thigh Gap

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Literature Text

My mother left us when we were still very young, and I was left to the scrutiny and opinions of my sisters and my father. My sisters were, though I did not know it at the time, very jealous of my small size. They would act on this in various ways, in telling me my figure was boyish or wrong or straight up and down. They would tell me I was ugly. I was so ugly, men wouldn’t even rape me. They would laugh at me when I tried to make it “better”, with makeup or clothing. Clothing I liked and they deemed a waste of money. So my oversized t-shirts got teased into the garbage, my big black boots were donated away, my dollar store eyeshadow collected dust.

And this wasn’t their fault. They too were raised in a world filled with skinny ideas, with celebrity crushes who dated supermodels, with advertisements and magazines and television shows and my father telling them to lose some weight already.

So I was left with no identity, being teased out of the things I liked or enjoyed. I was left with “skinny”, and people never let me forget it.

“Wow, you’re so skinny!”

“Look how beautiful your daughter is; she’s so skinny!”

“Such a pretty skinny girl!”

Skinny became me and I became skinny, because that is what my sisters and my father and the strange people at school and the synagogue said. I was just a kid, and no one told me different, not for my whole childhood. People only liked me because I was such a pretty, skinny girl. I was sure of that.

It wasn’t so bad in highschool. I was surrounded by friends who weren’t focused on skinny, like everyone else seemed to be. I wanted to develop as a person, but having been denied that all my childhood, I did not know how to start.

The way I decided to learn, I know now is based on mirror neurons. I subconsciously resolved to learn via imitation.

This, however, is very difficult when you have closed-off friends. I resorted to extreme behaviour, to shocking, inappropriate, childish behaviour, so I could gauge reactions and learn how to be a person.

I watched anime, and many of my friends still tease me for acting “just like an anime character”, but understand: this was the only way I really learnt how to act as a person.

It was passable all through highschool, but things changed when both my sisters had left the house. You see, my father was not all there. He was mentally disfigured, and very narcissistic.

Before, he would spread his behaviour between myself and my sisters, so I didn’t experience the full impact, but now it was just me and him. And his personality suffocated me. He would use me as a personal therapist, as a maid, as a close friend. He expected me to skip school and be there for him. He expected me to never leave the house. He expected me to sit with him for hours on end, listening to him complain and worry.

He also had his own ideas about who I was.

He never took the time to learn, nor did he care. He would tell me, since my childhood, my oldest sister was the smart one, my middle sister was the nice one, and I was the pretty one.

Pretty.

Pretty pretty.

Prettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettyprettypretty.

My personality was suffocated.

I was the disobedient one. I was a bad daughter. I was rude, ungrateful, misbehaving, a slut, a whore, a thorn in his side, but I was pretty.

“This is my daughter.”

“Oh, she’s pretty!”

“Yes, she is, isn’t she?”

I was back to pretty and skinny. This was who I was, and suddenly, pretty was my new hobby. I studied makeup blogs. I watched youtube videos. I refused to leave the house if I felt “fat”, and my entire day was ruined if my hair didn’t look perfect.

I scrutinized celebrities, comparing my height, my weight, and my measurements against theirs. I looked it up over and over and over, for every single one. Pornstars, A-list, D-list, models, random girls on the internet, I compared and compared.

The obsession grew.

“I don’t have breasts like that.”

“My waist is not quite that skinny.”

“Does my stomach stick out too much?”

It became an obsession. I weighed myself every day. I measured every inch. I recoiled away from food. I aimed to work out more.

And university was hard. I was surrounded by a bad group, people who felt entitled to tell me what I should look like, how I should change my looks, even if it was simply impossible.

I was already obsessed with pleasing others, with looking good, so it went further. I portioned meals. I contoured. I cried over the size of my nose, the size of my breasts, the fact that my waist was not small enough.

I was lucky to meet some very good friends who didn’t care about appearances. There were people who encouraged me to eat as much as I would like, who enjoyed being around me for my personality (!)

Summers back home were the worst, though. My father got worse, and my obsession followed. I spent ridiculous amounts of time getting ready, even if I was just going outside for a second. My boss hit on me. My boss’ married brother hit on me. So it piled on, and so I continued to obsess.

I stopped eating, or I ate very little. Maybe it was just a need to control something in my downward-spiral life, maybe I just wanted to stay pretty. But it worked. I felt safe.

Going back to school this year was hard. My best friend had graduated, and my other closest friend stopped talking to me. The friends I had left grew busy or distant. I no longer had the support, the acceptance of myself.

One day I stepped on the scale, and I weighed 103 lbs, the same height and weight as Audrey Hepburn.

I was ecstatic. A secret part of me was terrified, but it didn’t matter. Maybe I would finally look good.

I didn’t

I still don’t know how I really look, but I saw myself in the mirror and cried. I looked so fat, and my boobs were still too small. My nose was too big, my hair was too frizzy, my pores were visible, I still had acne, I haven’t shaved recently, my hips were too small…

My thoughts clanged around my head, and it hurt.

I stopped trying in school, and I kept obsessing over my looks. I would gorge myself on carbs, and cry about it the next day, hating myself, refusing to eat. I would spend hours examining every inch in the mirror, tweezing, plucking, concealing, smoothing, and worrying.

I wasn’t pretty, I would never be pretty, and I had nothing else.

I’m still not over it. I have better days, I have worse days. I still don’t try in school, much as I know I can do it.

And then came the dreaded thigh gap.

Even drowning in all my cognitive dissonance, I still though the thigh gap was perhaps the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. At most, your pants wouldn’t wear out so quickly between your inner thighs, but pretty?

Was it pretty? Was it desirable?

People seemed to think so. I’ve always had a thigh gap, so I never really thought about it.

But as I worked out more, I noticed something: My thigh gap was shrinking. My muscles were growing. And I wasn’t sure how to react to it.

On one hand, girls should be slender and delicate and thigh gaps are model-esque things.

On the other hand, girls with some muscle were super sexy and didn’t it not matter anyways? Didn’t I want to be strong and toned?

It was sort of easy, though, to say goodbye to my thigh gap. It was almost a relief.

And weird! So weird! I’m not used to doing things because I want to, doing things that fly directly in the face of “pretty”, but I want to be strong.

Bye, bye thigh gap. I don’t need you anymore.
© 2014 - 2024 Judyta-Black
Comments3
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Scattle's avatar
Very powerful and moving, love.

No, you're not 'pretty'. You're gorgeous. Inside and out. You're a compassionate, loving, sensitive soul, and you have striking, beautiful features. Fuck 'pretty'. It's an empty word that doesn't reflect anything. You are so much more than 'pretty'. <3