“Oh my God! You’re not allowed to say you have cellulite.”

“You’re the perfect size–not gross skinny but not too big.”

“At least you actually have an ass, unlike most skinny people.”

“She’s way too skinny to play a sex symbol. Don’t you think?”

“At least you can find clothes for your size.”

That is just a snapshot of the perceptions around the figure of a woman in a setting where women take great pride in whatever shape they are. Women all over the world feel the pressure to represent something to the world with their physiques. They are lobbied to stand up for women with certain body types. They are essentially forced to pick sides.

What distresses women is not the fact that people throw the words “curvy”, “thick” or “thin” around; it is the fact that it has such a defining element in the lives of women. A good sum of women mention that their weight is what mostly consumes their daily thoughts. We have matured in a culture that – regardless of its capability to analyze and even convict its own behaviour’s – seems to find ease and control in disseminating its own obsessions. We live in a society that continuously reminds women that they are not enough. That there are always flaws and things that need to be changed or fixed. Upon entering a shop, every single register one comes across is full of cheap celeb rags that tell women how to get Angelina Jolie’s arms and Kim Kardashian’s flat stomach on the one hand and on the other, women that look like Adele are considered to have weight problems.

In this day and age, women find it so hard to believe that they are enough. Numerous reasons account for this problem. The most obvious one would be; wanting to come across as sexy and appealing. Society has set standards of how women should look and because of the public, it has become acceptable for men to define what a woman is and most importantly how a woman should look. I find it quite odd that there are men out there who have such precise ideas about a women’s weight. It has come to be such a norm for women to try and fix things in themselves that they regard as being imperfect and ugly. Self-love and self-appreciation has become so rare in society that it is actually unwelcomed. There is so much pressure to strive for perfection with our bodies that if one doesn’t meet the requirements, they are left out in the cold.

The questions at hand are not “what does a real woman look like?” or “why aren’t there more varied body types represented?”, the question is why is so much emphasis placed on how a “real woman” should look like. Society is a plain, dark place that burnishes women’s emotional psyches in an effort to make money and fame. This will not change overnight but women in society can change their responses to it. As a woman, I personally say ladies should abandon the “boxes” they’ve been placed in. Size 2 is perfectly real and so is wearing a size 8, 12 or 22. The same goes for having big boobs or small boobs.

Women of all physiques need to act against society trash-talking their bodies. Society treats beauty and body shape like a universal debate i.e. there must be one beauty, one answer… and everything else is excluded or regarded as a lie.

The world can’t choose how best to glorify or belittle women. Women need to stop defining their beauty by their weight. Believe that you are beautiful as you are because rest assured, society will never tell you that.

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