A curvy angle?
The question of size has cropped up quite a bit of late it seems. Rosemary did a lovely post on it recently (see here) and I found myself in the middle of a Twitter conversation about it early last week too when I mentioned that I, like a couple of other Twitter ladies, would like to lose a few lbs.
Nothing out of the ordinary there, but what was interesting, to me at least, and quite reassuring was that it wasn’t just other women defending a girl’s right to curves, but quite a few blokes too.
Now, the conversation wasn’t anything particularly revolutionary; the standard, woman wanting to be a little bit smaller than she is, stuff really. But men seemed to be genuinely at pains to point out that “thin” is not necessary, with real concern that we would go too far or that we were dieting when we really didn’t need to.
I would hardly describe myself as thin though and I don’t aspire to it. Don’t get me wrong I’m not Wanda either though. I’d just like to tighten up a few of the er, wobblier bits of me & lose a bit of my tummy… and don’t get me started on the boobs, though I could diet myself to nothing and I’m pretty sure they’d still be there, taking over the world!
It got me to thinking though – who are we dieting for? I tend to notice that it’s primarily my single girlfriends that are most conscious about their weight. So is it a case of slimming down to attract a bloke? But what happens after you’ve got one? You pile on the pounds once he’s too involved? Hardly seems fair really. False advertising, if you will.
Are we doing it for each other’s approval? Heaven knows we all notice when a friend’s put on a few pounds or even if she’s looking a bit on the skinny side.
Are we doing it for our colleagues? It’s a bit of a taboo thing to say, but you don’t tend to see many really fat women at the top of the corporate ladder do you? The same can’t really be said for the blokes however.
Well, I don’t have the answers. It’s probably a combination of all of the above and a multitude of other reasons to be honest. All I know is that I’m doing it for myself really. If a bloke doesn’t fancy me because I weigh a little more than I’m happy with or my friends don’t approve of how I’m looking, or a potential employer doesn’t think I’m slim enough to catch a client’s eye then frankly they can all fuck off.
The thing is, I fundamentally like who I am and am really happy with, er, me. Yes, there are things I’d like to change and ways I think I can improve, but these go beyond the existence of my love handles. I’m not ashamed to say it, but I have curves and I love them (I even toyed with the idea of going all Dove campaign on myself & putting a pic on here, but chickened out!). And I like to think I know how to work them when the need arises. I feel way sexier now I have a few curves on me than I did when I was a skinny whippet, that’s for sure.
Which brings me back to the response of the men on Twitter who engaged in the debate. Lads, you’re a breath of fresh air! I’ve always believed that men like a girl who’s got a little junk in her trunk and it’s nice to hear a few of you come out and say as much.
Maybe the Sunday Times was right and we’re seeing the “Return of the Sex Bomb” and with it more acceptance of curves etc. Who knows? But if I was a bloke, or even a lady-loving girl, I certainly know which of the girls below I’d be going for…
The frail girl who'll snap if things get too boisterous
The one who'd encourage boisterousness because tousled looks good
Dena
I agree with you entirely-curvy is better! I know I harp on a lot about my weight but at 5ft2in its more an issue with buying clothes for me than anything else as a few pounds do not sit well on me! I would have no time for a man who has an issue with my weight but I will admit to caring what other women think of me! At the moment I am incredibly uncomfortable with my weight and even have an unpublished post written! Thanks for this post though-feeling a wee bit better!
PS You are fabulous!
Hello Dena,
Well as a lady who has just lost 2 stone I did not want to loose my curves either! I just wanted to loose the flab that made me not want to look in a mirror. The flab that had me buying size 16. The flab that made me hide in black. I did it totally for me but I don’t want to go too far so the loss stops here. Am still curvy – I hope
PS I agree with Amy….you are fabulous! x
Kathryn – well done you! I lost about 2 stone last year & love it. Got another to go, but am in no rush really (especially as I am tucking into a roast chicken as I type this!) But congratulations – it’s hard work at times, but lovely when you’re there isn’t it. I have to say, I think you look fab!
Amy – get that post published! You’re a stunning girl in my opinion, but if losing a bit will make you feel better, then go for it.
Hey Dena, thanks for the link – and for the piece, definitely some interesting points raised. I think that definitely girls diet for girls a lot of the time; when you’re single you’re in direct competition with other single females and I think a lot of the pressure comes from within what earlier feminists might have called the “sisterhood”, something I think we’ve now utterly lost in any case.
I had a discussion with a friend of mine this evening about the whole men and curves thing, and I reckon that, at a certain point in most men’s lives, it’s not as black and white as “curvy is better”. I think that the culture (of porn, degradation of women, objectification of the female form) that we’re so immersed in now means that men will often go for a woman who fits the cultural ideals, but often in a very casual sense; so the woman he’ll fancy as a trophy will often have a completely different figure to the woman he’ll fancy as a partner. Any men care to give their tuppenceworth?
Oh and re the colleagues question: it’s pretty much a fact that women in the workplace are valued on aesthetics, as they are in any sphere. Men don’t have that pressure – a successful man, no matter what he looks like, is a successful man. A successful woman, on the other hand, if she is good-looking, it is often inferred that she got there by immoral means; if she is not, then she’s probably a bitch, or a lesbian, and in any case a successful woman is often seen to have eschewed her femininity in place of “power”, which (duh) is a masculine trait. We’ve come so far, I think, but there’s so much farther to go, and it’s fair to say that we (women) are our own worst enemies.
Full disclosure: this particular topic is a bit of a bugbear for me, I did my MA thesis on “How women conspire to oppress women in fashion magazines for women, by women”!
@Rosemary “How women conspire to oppress women in fashion magazines for women, by women”!
That sounds like a really interesting thesis, I bet it was hard to get in the required word count, that’s something that could be a tome! That one reason why I gave up reading the mainstream female magazines years ago because they really are just “diet”, “how to look younger”, and “buy buy buy”. Talk about trying to hammer in a message. It gets dull after a while.