I just ate a box of tiny teddies. I feel sick but I refuse to feel guilty.

I have a photo that I really want to show people. it’s a naked, albeit modestish, photo of me. I really love it because although I haven’t changed a single thing about how my body looks. While I was taking it I wasn’t thinking about how to sit so as to look the skinniest or to try and look at all sexually appealing. It turned out exactly how I wanted it to. Sometimes I think that I would like to show people because I really love it but then I remind myself that my avenue for showing people photos is via the internet and I’m not entirely comfortable with there being a naked picture of me on the internet. Accompanying this photo is a paragraph I wrote in a moment of anger and frustration with how everyone around me seemed to think that they had a right to comment on my body. The following comments were nearly all made in about the space of a month if I remember correctly..

I get told that my boobs are huge, that my boobs are small.

That I am ‘clearly larger’ than friends and that I am a ‘tiny little thing.’

I have been called a bitch for being skinny, I have been called a fat bitch for eating doughnuts.

I have had my eating choices questioned so frequently that I have developed an automatic response.

I wear clothes comfortably in sizes 8,10,12,14, S,M, L.

I get praised for losing weight and asked with kind concern if I have gained any.

I get told to ‘flaunt it if you’ve got it’ and told off for inadvertently showing too much boob.

I feel guilty for not being self deprecating and vain for thinking that I am beautiful.

I am what society would call the ‘right’ size, and I struggle to cope with the pressure that is placed on me with regards to my body. How then does everyone cope, who doesn’t fit society’s mould of what a woman should look like?

Since coming to college I noticed that pressure on young women doesn’t necessarily come only from other people, it comes from them. How have we trained women to think that they don’t deserve food? Food is what we need to live and yet for women, they are doing a bad thing eating it.

“oh, I want *insert food here* but I shouldn’t..”

“This tastes too delicious to be healthy.”

Screw that! I want to be able to have dessert two nights in a row without feeling the need to justify myself. I want to sit in the comm and polish off a block of chocolate with a group of friends without anyone mentioning weight. I want to be allowed to think that I beautiful without it being a personal affront to everyone else.

I feel powerless to do anything but something HAS to change!